June 26:
We had to get up early, early this morning: 3:45 a.m. We needed to be at the bus by 5:00 a.m. although Brother David asked us to be there by 4:45 a.m. Luckily this was a change from previous instructions that we had to leave the hotel at 3:00 a.m. Mike, our tour guide, said that getting to the airport 4 hours early was not necessary... so we got to sleep in... until 3:45!! Woo hoo! The hotel had breakfast bags to go for us and coffee and tea. Unfortunately, the tea water was cold so we couldn't make tea! After getting on the bus and heading to the airport, I looked at the breakfast - it did not look appetizing at all and it was so early that I decided not to eat.
We got to the airport, checked in (which took awhile even though we had a couple of agents attending to only us), and then went through security. We only had about a 1/2 hour before the boarding started. Lufthansa had free hot beverage machines (very nice) so I had a cafe mocha - yummy! It was strong but good. We then boarded our flight and took off close to on time. We were flying from Munich to Frankfort with a flight time of only 30 minutes. We didn't worry about sitting by our trip partners. I slept a lot of the flight.
After arriving in Frankfort, we took the tram to the C concourse. Brenda and I stopped and got a pretzel (gotta have a pretzel in Germany). We then had to go through passport control. It was nuts because we kept having to switch lines. They have special lines for European citizens and those lines are very short. Our lines were very long. We didn't realize there was a difference and got in the short line - noooooo, an airport official said we had to get in the correct line. So we moved over to the long lines. Shortly thereafter another airport official had us move over to the European passport control lines. The first guy saw us moving and ran over to find out what we were doing. The second guy told him so we got to stay in the short line. But then the passport control agent got upset that we were in his line since we were not European citizens. Ugh!! We finally did get through but it was a bit ridiculous. Now mind you there are like 25 of us moving back and forth, back and forth...
We then had to go through security AGAIN! We finally made it to the gate. Brother David and his wife, Linda had problems with their tickets and by the time they got it cleared up it was too late for them to take our flight. They got on a later one. After we waited for the pilot to finally show up (he was coming in on another flight), we finally got to board the plane for Chicago. It would be a flight time of about 8 hours and 10 minutes. I was able to switch seats and sit by Brenda for this long flight. We took off close to a 1/2 hour late. Shortly after takeoff, they served us drinks and a bag of crackers. A little while later we had lunch - an asian rice mixture, roll, salad, yogurt of some kind, and a cherry dessert. The rice mixture was a little warm for me.
We hit a bit of turbulence after lunch. Other than that it was an uneventful flight. We got up several times to walk around the plane or use the restroom. Of course, everytime I went to use the restroom, we would hit a small patch of turbulence!!
We arrived back in St. Louis safe and sound. It was an absolutely wonderful trip!!
Our first stop was Neuschwanstein Castle- a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and was the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle. Ludwig II only lived in the palace for a total of 172 days. Unfortunately, they did not allow photography inside the castle. It was such a cool place!
When we first arrived in the village below the castle, we walked around a gift shop. Our guide, Mike, said it was a steep but pleasant stroll to castle that would take about 20 minutes. For an extra cost, you could take a bus or horse carriage up. We opted for the nice stroll. Wow!! It was a VERY steep walk that most of us considered strenuous!! It was a very tough walk. But seeing the castle at the top was a very nice reward! It was fantastic! We took a tour of the castle.
The views from the castle were phenomenal.
After the tour we had about 2 hours to walk back down to the town, eat lunch and do any shopping. Sharon joined Brenda and me for the walk down because Gary, her husband, wanted to go off somewhere else. 
In the distance you could see Hoenschwangau Castle - a 19th century palace that was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was built by his father, King Maximilian II of Bavaria. We didn't have enough time to tour it.
We walked to Marien Bruecke (Mary’s Bridge built by Ludwig’s father Maximillian II) for a spectacular, panoramic view of Neuschwanstein Castle from an iron-bridge over the gorge across the Pollat River.
It took the 3 of us awhile to walk back to town because we were gabbing the whole way. We accidentally walked down the "bus road" (no pedestrians allowed) and had a bus just about run us off the road (he did it on purpose...). It was a bit scary... When we reached town, we stopped at the first restaurant we came to for lunch. I had a view of Hohenschwangau Castle during lunch.
We still had to walk across town to reach the bus. Luckily it was a small town. We made it in time and had a few minutes to shop before loading back onto the bus. Everywhere we went on the roads, we saw the word "ausfahrt" - finally figured out it meant "exit". I saw a t-shirt that said "why are all towns called Ausfahrt in Germany" (or something like that). I had to get a picture of me by a sign (yes, I am silly).
At 1:10 p.m. we loaded onto the bus again for the 2 hour drive to Munich. Once there, we picked up our local guide, Frank. He gave us a driving tour of Munich. It was very interesting but just driving around made it hard to take good pictures.
We did stop and walk the grounds of the Nymphenburg Palace - the main summer residence of the rulers of Bavaria. 
After the visiting the palace grounds, we drove around Munich a little while longer. Munich has some really cool old buildings. Would have loved to have spent more time here, walking around and learning more about some of these buildings.
At 5 p.m. we dropped off our local guide and headed to our hotel. It was still over an hour to it. The hotel is only 15 minutes from the airport which will be really nice in the morning. We dropped our stuff off in our rooms and immediately went to dinner. After dinner, Brenda and I went outside to take pictures of the hotel.
Then we headed back into our hotel room to repack our things for the trip home. We were in bed by 9:30 p.m. because we had to get up super early in the morning.