7/18 Is it ever going to stop raining? Oh well. I'm at Sleeping Beauty's castle!

Getting up early sucks, especially when you have to have your bags ready and out the door by 6:30. We had one of our long driving days ahead so we had to get on the road asap. Neha went to her parent's room right after the wake up call to get dressed. I got my luggage out quickly and got dressed. The look of the ominous clouds told me that it was probably going to be another cold and rainy day. So much for a hot summer European trip!

I ate breakfast and got on the bus. We had to drive a good couple of hours. Our first stop was the walled city of Rothenburg. When we pulled up, we were told that we only had about an hour and 15 mins. to walk around. It was still only about 9:30 in the morning so many of the shops and cafes were still closed.

I walked around by myself, peeking into the shops that sold cuckoo clocks and wooden toys. I walked around the town square and found a nice church and some fountains. A lot of the building fronts reminded me of some of the buildings in Fantasyland in Disneyland.

As I was wandering down a side street, it began to rain. I was really intelligent and left my umbrella on the bus. I started to make my way back to the bus but I stopped in a cafe to get a hot chocolate and a roll first. Afterwards, I put up my hood and ran down the cobblestone streets. By the time I got to the bus, the rain had really started to pick up.

We then had another couple of hours to go to get to our next destination: the Neuschwanatein castle. In between reading and sleeping (a lot of sleeping!), it seemed like we got there pretty quickly. We had about an hour to eat lunch in the small town below the castle.

I ate an expensive bowl of spaghetti with sauce that had the consistency of ketchup. When I was done, I headed outside to our meeting place where we were going to pick up our tram to take us up to the castle. We waited a few mins. in the rain until a tram showed up. Another man leading a different tour group got on and told his group to get on. Apparently they had missed their first tram because they were late so they were taking what should have been ours. This pissed off our tour guide so we were stuck for another 30 mins. in the cold and rain. When the tram finally showed up, we piled on and got to the castle at the top of the hill.

The castle is said to have been one of the two castles that inspired the Disneyland castle, aka Sleeping Beauty's castle. You can definitely see why by the shape of it. We had our tickets but had to wait until our number was posted to enter and start our guided tour.

After another 30 mins. of waiting in the rain and chatting with a crazy Indian-Canadian woman and her 2 daughters (who are on my tour), we got to go in the castle. We learned that it was built for a king but was never finished. He died unexpectedly by a suspicious drowning before it could be completed.

We were taken through the king's bedroom, sitting area, church, and a room that looked like a cave. We ended in the theater that the king never even saw a performance in. He was apparently a big fan of Wagner's plays/operas so all of the walls were tributes to the different Wagner stories.

After touring the castle, we didn't have much time to walk around on our own because we had to go meet the coach bus at the bottom of the hill. I had about 30 mins. and the walk down the hill would take at least 15-20. On the way down, I stopped in a snack shop to get a very dry and hard jumbo pretzel and a Twix that didn't taste like a Twix. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill, I was cold and tired.

Everyone made it to the bus on time (surprisingly.) We had been lectured the day before about getting to the bus late and how it throws us off our very tight schedule. It's funny, though, how the same people, (adults), just don't seem to get it.

We had another couple of hours to get to our final stop for the night: Innsbruck, Austria. I again spent the drive sleeping and reading, but mostly sleeping. When we finally pulled into Innsbruck, it was late evening. On the way up to our hotel, we saw a lot of buildings that were used in the 2 winter Olympic games that were held there. The coolest thing we saw was a ski jump on the side of the mountain.

We checked into our hotel. I got to have my own room for the night, which was nice. After dropping off my bags, I went to go have dinner, which was included. We had a pancake soup (weird) with salad, chicken and potatoes, and apple pie. Then, I went to the lobby to use the free wifi, which we really hadn't had since the trip started.

I got tired pretty quickly and headed upstairs to take a shower. The showers in Europe are so weird. They don't have traditional shower heads. They have the kind that you can detach. I can never seem to get mine to the right height and they never seem to angle correctly. After an awkward shower that soaked the floor, I got my things all packed up and ready to go for the next morning.