Vacation to King Ludwig's castles (part 3)

It's been over a month since our vacation and I need to finish blogging about it; I have new things to post! So this one may be fewer words and more pictures (the picture to the left is in the Neuschwanstein courtyard), which I'm sure people will be fine with.
It was decided that we would visit Linderhof Palace, a place King Ludwig visited with his father when he was little. He remodeled it to make it bigger and grander than ever. It is about an hour drive to this palace from our hotel. After we ate another scrumptious breakfast, we found the POI (point of interest) in our GPS and set off!
What a beautiful drive it was! There is a river that is such a light blue/green it almost seems unnatural. I love the pictures of Jer near the river. His eyes match the color of the water. We stopped at a little parking place to walk on a bridge that goes over the river. Beautiful!
We were soon in back country on a winding road that skirted the edge of an enormous lake. We stopped for pictures of the scenery a few times. I wish we could have spent a week camping out there! So quiet and peaceful. The mountains were majestic and the colors so vivid. I really believe this is the most beautiful place on earth!


When we were about 10-15 minutes from the palace, much to our chagrin, there was a road block. Gah! (In the US, if you come to a road block with a "Do Not Enter" sign, you can't go through, but here sometimes you can. It makes no sense!). There was room to go around it, but I think only for local traffic. We'd traveled so far already, we decided to just try, then suddenly: Semi! He took up the whole road, gave us a dirty look and motioned with his hand for us to turn around. I sort of felt like a dog whimpering after doing something wrong. Feeling a little sheepish, we turned around and drove back with tails between our legs. I was disappointed, but the scenic drive made up for it.
On the way back we started to notice signs that suggested we weren't in Germany. We never saw any signs like there are in the States that say "Thanks for visiting _______" or "Welcome to ______". As I already wrote in a previous entry, it is illegal for us to drive out of Germany without an international license. OOPS! Linderhof Palace is in Germany, but the drive took us into Austria, then would have taken us back into Germany again had we made it to our destination. Well, since we didn't get caught, it was worth the drive.
We were headed back home and there was one stop I had planned in Stuttgart. I planned something the boys would really enjoy: The Porsche Museum!
First impression upon walking in: very clean. Very white walls, white floors, white and black on the employees... We rented headsets in English and rode the very tall escalator up to the second floor and the start of our self-guided tour of cars, cars, and more cars!
Each exhibit had a number we could punch in the headset and get information about. It was quite interesting. I have a few favorites. I liked the pink car. The story behind that was because it was pink it got the nickname of Pig. So, they painted lines to show each section of the pig: rump, head, etc. Pretty funny. I also liked the fire truck, tractor, and polizei cars. I saw an upside down car too!
There were terminals we could stand on and the marquee above us would state a type of engine, and the floor beneath would vibrate accordingly. There were also speakers so we could hear the different sounds of the engines. This was pretty cool. The place had so many cool looking cars--many unique cars too. And it was possible to hear the story behind each one, but there were just too many to listen to each story. Here is a picture of the many trophies Porsche has won in races over the years.
After the museum we were pooped (!) so we headed for home. What a fabulous vacation! Vielleicht werde ich einen Porsche kaufen.