We arrived in Austria yesterday afternoon, staying in the small town on Reutte, right near the border with Germany, surrounded by alpine peaks with the first dusting of snow, and the trees starting to show their fall colors.  It’s lovely.

Today we visisted two castles across the border in the southern Bavarian region of Germany.  The older of the two is Hohenschwangau Castle, which was built in the 12th century, ruined during the Napoleon invasions, and rebuilt in 1830, and served as a summer home to the royal family at that time, and it is still owned by a royal Bavarian family.  The more famous and visited castle is Neuschwanstein, which was built on medieval ruins, and was the imagined fairy tale castle of King Ludwig, and the inspiration for the castle at Disneyland.  The tours of the castles were very dry and uninspiring, with no interior photos allowed, but it was a treat to see the inside of each, nonetheless.  I took many exterior photos, and still didn’t do them justice.

We got back to Reutte in the early afternoon, and had free time, which gave me a chance to get some photos uploaded to previous posts, and get caught up on this blog.  Photo upload and gallery creation is continuing to be quite laborious and challenging, and I’m not sure how much more of it I can do.  I may switch to smugmug or another photo sharing option and simply link to it from here.