Neuschwanstein Castle – aka ‘The Real Cinderella Castle’ is absolutely stunning. You’ll find it on display high up on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau in southwest Bavaria, Germany.
I dreamed about visiting this castle since I was a kid. My parents traveled to Europe and told me about this beautiful castle. It was very high on my wishlist of places to visit. I am so thankful for the opportunity we had to drive there from a house we were staying at while petsitting. We felt so blessed to see this beautiful castle with our three boys.
To reach the entrance to the castle, you can walk up a paved road, ride a horse-drawn wagon up that same road, or take an undeveloped hiking trail that winds through the woods. We chose to hike the trail with our boys to reach the castle and walked the paved road back down the mountain when our tour was finished.
Visiting Neuschwanstein Castle balcony with kids
We bought our tickets online to tour the castle – make sure you do this ahead of time if you want to go inside Neuschwanstein Castle. Unfortunately, visitors are not allowed to take pictures inside the castle. However, it is an amazing experience to see the inside of it, even though the castle was only partially completed by the time King Ludwig II passed away.
Inside Neuschwanstein Castle, you’ll find a hallway built to look like a cave with stalactites and stalagmites, a theatre where the room’s entire floor was meant to be the stage and the balcony was where the audience sat to watch the performance, and many pieces of furniture with extremely detailed carvings.
After visiting the castle, we walked on a paved path to cross a bridge that offered an amazing view overlooking the valley and Neuschwanstein Castle.
Fun Facts About Neuschwanstein Castle:
📌 Walt Disney designed the Cinderella Castle based on this south-eastern German castle!
📌 King Ludwig II of Bavaria ended up only living in his castle on and off for a mere 6 months before he died!
📌 The German word for ‘castle’ is ‘Schloss’, so this is called ‘Schloss Neuschwanstein”. Try saying that 10 times!
An unrelated story during our Neuschwanstein Castle visit:
While walking the path from the castle up to the bridge that overlooks the valley, Ian found a wallet on the ground. We asked the people standing nearby if anyone had just dropped it, but didn’t find the owner. Thankfully, most of the guests spoke English, but no one said they dropped a wallet.
I opened the wallet to check the ID card inside it to see if a photo on the card could help me find the person who had dropped the wallet – I found an American driver’s license with a lady’s name and photo on it.
We decided to put the wallet in our pocket and take it down to a local shop at the bottom of the hill. But first, we wanted to walk across the bridge overlooking the castle.
As we approached the entrance to the bridge, a young couple was sitting on large rocks beside the path, visibly upset. I immediately recognized the lady – her face was on the driver’s license in the wallet Ian had found!
Ian approached the couple with the wallet in his hands. Before he could finish saying, “Is this yours?” the lady’s boyfriend quickly walked over to him and gave him a hug!
The lady was speechless as we explained how we had found the wallet only a few minutes ago, and Ian held it out for her. She had just started attempting to make calls to cancel the credit card that was also in the wallet but was having no success because of the limited cell coverage on the mountain.
This memory is unrelated to the castle itself but a happy memory that we have tied to our visit to Neuschwanstein Castle to this day.
We’re smiling extra big in our family photo on the bridge with the castle behind us, imagining what it would have been like for us to have lost a wallet in a foreign country and then have it handed to us a few minutes later.
We were able to take our family of 5 to Europe for 7 months because a big portion of our accommodation was through Trusted Housesitters – here’s our review of this house sitting app!
