Herrenchiemsee Castle

While I was in Germany, I learned a lot about Bavaria. My most favorite thing was Ludwig II. Such an interesting guy! Here's the link to his wikipedia page if you want to read a bit. One of my favorite things about him is that he loved building castles. He actually built the castle that became the model for Sleeping Beauty's castle. I mean how cool is that?!

While I was there, we visited Herrenchiemsee, which was modeled after Versailles. Ludwig II was obsessed with Louis XIV, so he wanted to build this monument in his honor. Unfortunately, he never finished because he ran out of money. Only 20 out of the 70 rooms were finished. But that made the tour more interesting. We walked through the finished entrance and through the rooms he copied from Versailles. There were many rooms dedicated to this museum-like building, including a hall of mirrors. He also had a personal apartment for his own use. The poor guy only stayed in this palace for a total of 10 days. I can't imagine how beautiful it would be if they had finished everything.

Sadly there are no pictures allowed inside, and I didn't get any outside with my camera because it was snowing/raining. Thankfully Rosalie used her phone to snap some shots for me.

The weather was absolutely freezing and the wet snow didn't help. But the good thing was we had the castle almost to ourselves. We had about 10 people in our tour group which gave people the opportunity to ask questions. And there are no other tourists in our pictures! Always a plus. Next time I got to Germany, I want to visit his other castles. Neuschwanstein for sure, as well as Linderhof, which has a grotto (modeled after the blue grotto in Capri) he built so he could ride in a golden swan boat. Such a character, that Ludwig!