01-May-2009: Germany - The Romantic Road

We hired a car in Munich and hit the road for a girls weekend to explore the Romantic Road in southern Germany.



The Romantic Road is famous for its many picturesque castles, cathedrals and medieval towns. On our roadtrip, we visited the towns of Nordlingen, Rothenburg ib der Tauber, Harburg, Fussen and Harburg.



We spotted some beautiful rapeseed fields and couldn't resist but stop to take some photos, even though we ended up being covered in yellow pollen afterwards :-)


The most interesting and beautiful castle we visited was Neuschwanstein castle, which was built in the late 1800's by King Ludwig II. Construction was halted after 14 years of building, when King Ludwig was removed from power after he was deemed unfit to rule. Shortly afterwards, the king died from an apparent suicide. And then 7 weeks later, the castle was opened to the public as a museum. It really was what you would imagine a fairytale castle to be - in fact, Walt Disney used Neuschwanstein castle as inspiration for Cinderella’s Castle at the Disney theme park




The other girls flew back to London and I stayed an extra night to visit my penpal Claudi and her husband Sven, in Stuttgart and meet the new addition to their family, Anna-Lena. It was great to catch up and see Claudi in action as a mum - it seemed like she had settled very well into motherhood and enjoying it very much.