We had an earlier than normal start today as our Lonely Planet guide warned us that tickets to tour Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein castle sell out by 8.30am at the peak of summer. Anyway after driving from Oberstdorf to Fussen, a bit of traffic and a trip to the information centre, we made it to the ticket office by 11am. The good news was that the tickets hadn't sold out. The bad news was that the earliest we could get to tour was 5pm and the queue for such a tour was an hour long! Oops, sorry Lonely Planet, you were right. Next time we'll believe you and set the alarm for 5am :)

There was still plenty to see and we started with a look around Hohenschwangau castle, which was were King Ludwig II grew up. Next we had good workout walking 45 minutes (45 hours, says Rebecca) up a steep hill to see Neuschwanstein castle, aka the Fairy Tale castle, supposedly the inspiration for Disney's fantasy castle. It was built by Ludwig II as a big monument to himself, saying "Look at me! Look at me!" (I've forgotten the official version, but that's close enough ;) ) There was a nice view point from Mary's bridge and we walked there too. There were tonnes of tourists, but we managed to ignore the fake earthquakes they were generating on the bridge and got a few nice photos anyway.

Our next stop was Innsbruck, Austria and the trip wasn't scary because of the roads, but rather the Austrian drivers. They are easily the worst we have seen so far and if Italians are worse as we've been told, then we're in big trouble! They are incredibly inpatient and overtake you at great speed on blind corners where the speed limit is at most 60. We arrived at about 4pm in 32 degree heat and caught up on blogging and emails before it cooled enough for us to put the tent up.

The camp ground where we stayed was lovely. It had nice clean kitchen, shower and toilet facilities and even had free wifi internet. The ground itself was rather hard though, having been covered in stones and compacted, so most of our pegs were only hammered in a couple of inches. I'm not complaining though, cos if truth be told, a bit of hard ground is one reason we came here :)

That night at about 2am we both woke up from the thunder and lightning just over the mountain from our campsite. I've heard that in Austria the hills are alive with the sound of music but that's pushing it a bit :) We moved to the car until the worst of it had passed and then went back to peaceful slumber.

- Brett