![\"Neuschwanstein](\"http:\/\/theagostins.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/P1100738.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0So that was the plan, but of course plans go awry! Its supposed to be a four hour drive to the castle, so we left early in the morning with plans to make to the castle, then spend the night in the hour-away mountain town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Oh important tidbit, while we didn\u2019t get a white Christmas, we got a white day after Christmas\u2026 and every day since then! So there\u2019s a good amount of snow already, and as we\u2019re leaving it starts coming heavily down again. So our four hour drive turned into eight+ hours to get to the castle. We arrive there and park, but can\u2019t see the castle because of the snow coming down. We go to buy tickets to go up, and learn that we got there 10 minutes AFTER the ticket office closed. So no princess castle for Lizzy on her birthday.<\/p>\nKnowing it\u2019s taken twice as long to drive as we had planned, we decide to leave for our hotel immediately since it\u2019s going to take a couple hours and make the most of it. The drive was absolutely gorgeous and took us through Austria for the majority of the time. The snow was really fluffy and I just couldn\u2019t help myself, when we got stuck in traffic I jumped out and made snow angels!<\/p>\n After our quick dinner we returned to a big welcome from the Irish pub. Seriously, how is it that every Irish pub in the world consistently delivers a guaranteed good night?! We made lots of friends there and closed the place down at about 4:00 AM!<\/p>\n The next morning we were up early and ready to see this castle! We made it back to the castle and this time were able to get tickets AND we could see the castle from a distance. It definitely lived up to the hype!!<\/p>\n We took the required tour to see the inside and it was equally as impressive. Both Rick and I agreed that of all of the famous, historical buildings we\u2019ve seen on this trip and others, this was our favorite! It\u2019s beautifully made inside, and intricate and in great condition. Sorry, no photos allowed inside so I don\u2019t have any share \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n King Ludwig II who built it was considered insane. I can see why from even just the exterior design, it\u2019s so different from other castles. It took 23 years to build. The king moved in before it was completed\u2026 and good thing because he only got to live in it for one year before he died. King Ludwig was a recluse and built it for complete seclusion, the plan was for the castle to be \u201csacred and out of reach\u201d from people\u2026 and only six weeks after he died the castle was opened to the public. It\u2019s in the top three most visited places in Germany. Guess that didn\u2019t work out so well for him!<\/p>\n It was pretty awesome to see. I\u2019m really glad we visited while we were in Germany.<\/p>\n But I have to admit the 18+ hours of driving was kind of a beat down so it was really great to get lots of emails and Facebook comments from everyone back home! Thanks for making me feel special on my birthday! Cheers! Well I\u2019m 31 now. I\u2019m into my 30\u2019s officially. To be honest, I\u2019m not feeling super great about it. I liked being 30 and wasn\u2019t totally ready for that to be over. But oh well, no real choice about it, so I figured we should get on with the celebrating! We debated on where to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[111,112,105,113,11],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-germany","tag-birthday","tag-castles","tag-germany","tag-snow","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0The hotel was great and we quickly headed into town to grab dinner and figure out where to celebrate. We walked a couple blocks and found the \u201cGrill und Wein\u201d restaurant we were hoping for, and then found it was closed for the holidays, as were most of the other nice places in town. So what did we do??? Exactly what you do anywhere in the world when you\u2019re celebration plans don\u2019t work out\u2026 you find the Irish Pub! And there was one just down the street. After a birthday pint of Bavarian brew there, we went to grab pizza for dinner, promising our new Irish pub friends to be back shortly.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0It\u2019s a 40 minute walk up the hill, which was like walking in a winter wonderland.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"