Ribbons Undone

Linderhof Castle was the smallest of King Ludwig’s castles and the only one he lived to see completed. The grounds are expansive and beautiful. When you first pull up there’s a little village at the bottom of the hill with a few houses where you can buy snacks/ meals and souvenirs…

love that these Popsicles are the German flag colors

typical German snack food

Beer Steins (mostly King Ludwig/ Castle themed)

dolls in Lederhosen

Then up to the Castle!

On our way up we saw the Moroccan cabin (wish I’d gotten a picture of the inside)…

little Chapel

inside the Chapel

Front entrance to Linderhof Castle. Once again- no pictures allowed inside so all of these pics are of the outside grounds.

view opposite front entrance

One of our scariest parenting moments happened here. See that little brown building behind the white benches? That’s the bathroom. I was helping Kiera in there and then needed to use the bathroom myself. Simon was waiting right outside with Quinnie so I told Kiera to walk out and stay with Papa. Unfortunately, Simon had his back to the bathroom door because he and Quinnie were checking out the gold fountain. Kiera got distracted by something and ran off to check it out (as kids her age often do). When I came out what followed was a very panicked 5 minutes of screaming her name and running around looking for her. I eventually found her at the very top of the hill. Poor Quinnie was so distraught. After we found Kiera she said (with tears in her eyes), ” Mama- I was SO scared! She’s my best sister!” (I can laugh about it now…)

This is where I found Kiera. Mom- I’ve totally been paid back for the time I wandered off when I was 5 to eat Oreos at the camp site without telling you. (She thought I had drowned and everybody on the beach had to make a human chain to drag the lake looking for me). I totally understand why the first thing you did when you saw me was smack my butt!

at the very top of the hill

back of the Castle

now we’re walking up to the Grotto..

entrance to the Grotto

Inside the Grotto. King Ludwig would ride in this golden swan boat and listen to live orchestras play for him (often Wagner).

On the way back down we stopped at the Music Pavillion.

view from inside the Pavillion

Any rock that’s climb-able was climbed!

Here’s more information on Schloss Linderhof if you’re interested.

This was everybody’s favorite day of our vacation. It was AMAZING. The Zugspitze is Germany’s highest mountain (9,718 ft. above sea level). We waited until Thursday when the weather report said it would be clear and sunny. It was the perfect day to go.

We planned on taking the Seilbahn (Gondola) up to the top, but the wait was an hour, so we decided to take the train instead.

on the train

climbing higher…

The train let us out here, where we exited this building. And these were our first breathtaking views…

Girls on top of snowbank (behind the skis). They were in HEAVEN. They’d never seen that much snow. As you can see, my white balance/ light meter on my camera was spazzing out because of the massive amounts of snow and light bouncing off of it. I decided to keep it though because that’s what it felt like in real life- absolutely brilliant and blinding.

On this level you could rent ski gear, go sledding/skiing and eat outside

…or at this cool restaurant.

Icicles!! The girls were SO excited to see them in real life- they had only seen them in books before (hard to believe, I know!).

enjoying their first icicles

Then we took the Gondola up to the summit.

There was another restaurant and gift shops up here.

The views were INCREDIBLE. Another place where pictures just don’t do it justice…

There’s an interesting story behind that gold cross you see on the mountain (on the Zugspitze Wikipedia page). I’ll add the link at the end of this post if you want to read about it.

Quinnie asked for my sunglasses. It was blindingly bright. So much so that we couldn’t stay up there as long as we wanted because we only had one pair of sunglasses.

Throwing snowballs

We headed back down on the Gondola to the previous level to take the girls sledding (their first time!). Simon desperately wanted to take the girls skiing but we were woefully unprepared. We didn’t know that the price of the train up covered a day of skiing as well (how cool is that?!), so we didn’t have the right clothing with us. We considered buying the gear we needed on the mountain (at outrageous prices of course), because how often does one get to ski on Germany’s highest mountain?! But we realized it was just too late in the day for it to make sense to do, so we opted to just go sledding instead.