Luke - 9.5

9.5mi, 75:20 (7:55)

After relaxing a bit in Munich on Saturday and Sunday, we were back to travelling again on Monday. We took a train South again, to the town of Füssen, which is near the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, and only a couple miles from Austria. When we got in it was raining, and we decided to visit the castle in the morning instead of that day. We walked a couple minutes outside of Füssen to the town of Bad Faulenbach and found a hotel. Our room was on the top floor and had a great view of the town and the surrounding mountains, and more importantly, had two recliners and giant blankets. We sat in the recliners with our blankets and dozed off for an hour or so, and it was glorious. When we got up and headed out for our run the rain had stopped. Once again the running was amazing. The town was geared towards the outdoors, and had a lot of trails for hiking, running, or Nordic walking, with signs at pretty much every single fork in the road telling you how to get to wherever you wanted to go. We ran from Germany into Austria, through a tiny town called Vils, and then found a trail that went straight up. There were switchbacks but it was still crazy steep. From Vils we could see an old castle on a hill; since our trail was heading around it I thought we should maybe come back in the morning and run to it, but then when we headed into the woods the trail led us to it after all. We stopped to check it out a bit; it was built in 1220, so it was pretty crazy to think about people being there that long ago. On the way back I was feeling pretty good so I invited Zack to accelerate a bit. We got down to about 6-minute pace for a while...we thought we were closer to the end than we actually were, so it ended up being a good couple miles of fast stuff, and I felt great. I guess the relaxing over the weekend and the hotel recliners got my body feeling right.

That night we got some amazing pizza at a place authentic enough that Zack used his Italian instead of me using my German. Afterward we got a beer at a little three-table bar, then headed to the grocery store and made some amazing purchases. Beer was between 40 cents and €1.05, plus between 8 and 15 cents deposit, so for €11.33 we got a €1.50 bag of pretzels, a €2 thing of cookies, and TEN half-liters of good German beer. We kept the receipt and might frame it.

Anyway we took our haul back to the hotel room and played cards and drank eight of the beers. Very fun night.

The next day we got our hotel breakfast and then took the bus to Neuschwanstein. The bus over was about 80% Japanese tourists. Instead of just going to the castle and looking at the inside, we hiked up to a bridge that overlooked the castle, then hiked up even further. It was a pretty long hike with amazing views. We wanted to stop at every switchback to take pictures because each view was better than the last. We could see the Neuschwanstein Castle, the Hohenschwangau Castle, some towns, and some mountains. On the way up to the bridge there were a total of two Japanese tourists, and on the rest of the hike there were zero. I guess most tourists just come into town, take the castle tour, and leave...they don't go on a run into Austria or hike up to 5600 feet to see the castles from above.

At the top, there was a restaurant (this is at the end of a 2½-hour hike...the Alps are amazing) so we got some amazing food...sausages and German potato salad for me, a gourmet mac-and-cheese type dish for Zack, and potato pancakes with applesauce and raspberries to share. Plus I got a liter of beer and Zack got a half-liter. We took a ski lift down to the bottom and laid in the grass in the sun for a half hour before the bus came to take us back to the train station.