After the success of last year’s trip to France’s eastern Christmas Markets, we have come back to Europe to try more of Germany’s Christmas Markets.

The big markets we are hitting this year are Stuttgart, Esslingen, Rothenburg, Nurnberg and Munich.

But before that, our first day will be spent visiting the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein Castle. This castle was built by a German king with a love the medieval era and hatred of actually being a modern king.

After landing in Munich, we made the drive out to the castle. Where Munich was soaked in a light rain, the area near Newschwanstein would become more and more blanketed in snow.

Before we could start the long trek up to the castle we had our first real meal of the trip.

After a fantastic lunch it was off to the castle!

Normally there is a shuttle bus to get you close to the base of the castle, not today. Today we got the joy of walking a constant incline to get to the castle gate in time for our tour. Tomorrow I should be able to say it was worth the hike. Right now my legs hurt too much.

I would love to show you some images of the inside of the incomplete castle; however, there is no photography allowed inside the castle. Normally, I would say this is due to a desire to sell the photo books at the gift shop. In this case, it is also partly because they have tours going through so fast that having people take photos would slow things to a crawl. Instead you will have to be content with images from the surrounding area.

Once we finally finished killing our legs we headed to the nearby town of Fussen for our first night lodging.

Finished the day with an unsatisfying meal of roast pork with cabbage and potato dumpling. I am really not a fan of the dumpling but never had it before so now I know.

Tomorrow, it’s off to our first Christmas Market!