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Jumping ahead on the posts to where we are today. A great relaxed feeling stepping off the train from Switzerland, finally on Italy. I just feel so “at home” here; the people, the food, the noise, the excitement and the beauty.
I just had to visit Liechtenstein. So we took the bus from Feldkirch and after 45 minutes we arrived in a modern, semi industrial country. The old town was a few “oldish” buildings but obviously this was a Swiss Franc tourist haven for what I am not sure. This country is pretty much protected from it’s long forgotten foes by huge mountains and I am guessing the countryside and especially the mountain areas are the attraction, not forgetting some wannabe millionaires deciding to stash some gold away from their government’s prying tax offices. It seems one main attraction is the 3 Euro passport stamp you can get at some of the tourist shops. Newbie tourists to Europe seem to need that. As for me, my passport fills up soon enough with one page visas Lao, Vietnam and Cambodian governments want to burden you with.
Staying near Liechtenstein, in Austria, is much cheaper so we stayed in Feldkirch and took a 45 minute ride to Vaduz in Liechtenstein. Feldkirch is a cute city and the decision to stay here was a good one. I will explain more in the Liechtenstein post.
These are all alpine animals
Innsbruck is a nice city to visit, many large buildings, a very long history, and some extremely beautiful views.
This lake is at the base of the two castles. It’s good for recreation.
There are 2 castles close together. Hohenschwangau was built on top of a 13th century castle ruin by Ludwig II’s father and the fairytale castle (Neuschwanstein) was built by Ludwig II, also known as “crazy Ludwig” (found insane after bankrupting the family and then mysteriously died). This castle here is probably the most famous icon of Germany and is really amazing to see, though both castles are expensive to enter. Best to book Neuschwanstein a month in advance so you get a good visit time. With both castles you only get a 45 or so minute tour so it isn’t really anything close to the in depth tour of the Munich Residence.
This little town is the cute entry to the two amazing castles up above, one of which is the famous fairytale castle built by Ludwig II. We had to try the sauerbraten. It wasn’t as good as my mothers but as you can see, it was good enough.
In order to get completely stuffed, we had pizza after sauerbraten.
