Yes we did!
I'm surprised that my family survived that day.
We drove from Garmisch and all was fine. We parked, took pictures and made our way to purchase tickets. This all too place arourd 1 pm....we bought tickets and our tour wasn't until 4:45 and my younger child wanted to go in the castle in a big bad way...but we had all that time to kill so we told him we were going to go to McD's about 4 km away...Well, this messed with the magical schedule of events that he had in his head so he melted down near the gift shops...(we were outside)
We were stared at by some older French ladies who then talked about us...and I know enough French to know it wasn't kind.
Finally we get him calm enough to walk (he's almost 8, autistic and in general a tall kid so just picking him up while he's in his zone is not an option)...We made it to McD's and all was fine....
We drove back and got in "line" (you've been to Germany, lines don't really exist) for the horse-drawn carriages..Well, Alex was scared so we left our older son with the in-laws and found the bus stop.
Okay, that might have been the scariest bus ride I've ever taken.
Around 4 pm we finally make it to the castle and find the rest of our family (my hubby took a brief but exhausting trek down some stairs to take pictures of the Marienbrucke)
As you'll notice we still had 45 minutes to entertain ALex....That might have been the slowest 45 minutes of my entire life.
We make it in the castle and all seems to be fine until I notice that Alex keeps putting something into his mouth...Yep, he had the bubble tape gum that his grandma bought him in his pocket and he was eating it during the tour. OH MY! I about had a heart attack. I was able to hold his hand to keep him from getting to it..I couln't make a big deal about it for fear of him having another meltdown....Finally, the tour ends and we make our way out of the castle...but we lost the in-laws and our other child.
We found other child and he wasn't happy that we were mad at him.
Finally the in-laws come out of the castle...this was a big problem during their trip, they kept forgetting that they weren't alone and had people waiting on them.
By the time we were all together again everything was closing down and we missed the last carriage, and by the time we made it to the bus, it had stopped running too. We walked down which would have been no big deal except the hubby decided that we should take the short cut (that is barely paved) and his step-dad just had knee surgery about 6 months ago...Yeah, he was in serious pain...
but it was (almost) worth it...
(sorry for the book)
