Top of the World

The view from the mountain top

Dad and the girls

Someone made a heart in the snow

Yes, this was staged

I am convinced that this is where the Elven city of Gondolin was

Hohenschwangau castle

Waiting for our tour

Neuschwanstein castle

 Today was the day that we went up the Tegelberg mountain.  The view from the top was absolutely stunning.  I could have stayed there forever.  Riding up in the cable car you could see Neuschwanstein castle, and you could look out over the whole city as if you were in a plane.  Abby, Sam and I went on a walk down one of the trails and I found a lake surrounded by mountains that looked exactly like how I pictured Gondolin.  One day I will buy that piece of land and build myself an elvish city there.  But in the meantime, we continued our hike until the path ended.  If we only we didn't have tickets to go back down, I would have stayed and explored for hours.  We ate lunch up at the top of the mountain that day, and then we went back down the mountain and rode on the luge.  Each of us got two rides on it and it was one of my siblings' favorite parts of the trip.  

Afterwards we toured both Hohenschwangau castle and Neuschwanstein.  I enjoyed the Hohenschwangau tour more, and one of my funniest memories of the trip comes from that tour.  There was a painting in one of the rooms that showed Luther hiding in the castle while fleeing from persecution in Augsburg in 1518.  While the tour guide was explaining this to us, dad raised his hand and objected.  "But that can't be true!  Martin Luther didn't even go to the Diet of Augsburg, he wasn't there in 1518.  Melancthon went instead.  And he wasn't under persecution, the imperial ban wasn't issued until 1521!"  Trust a Lutheran pastor to notice things like that.  No photos were allowed on either of the tours, but we did hike along the mountain behind Neuschwanstein and took the photos you've just finished scrolling through.  When we got back to our rooms that night, the most exciting thing we did was watch the Incredibles in German (which is a pretty awesome movie if I may say so myself) and we went to bed.  It's pretty tiring to hike up and down mountains, you know.