I need to schedule our castle tour tickets.

If we get to Füssen station at 12:57, what is a reasonable hour for a castle tour reservation? Where do we present ourselves at the appointed hour?

I am not sure this will help but you should find plenty of taxis waiting to meet the trains at Fuessen. The castle is less than an hour away...but don;t forget that once you get to the castle you still have to walk (or take one of the horse-drawn wagons) up the hill to the building itself.

It will take you approx. 15 minutes to get from the station to the bottom of the castle hill by taxi. There are no cars allowed up the hill, so you can either walk up the hill or take a horse wagon. The walk will take you approx. 30 minutes and is really nice. Have fun and enjoy the great view from Neuschwanstein castle over the surrounding mountains, little villages and different lakes (in which you can swim in case you take your bathing suits).

Based on your advice, I reserved a 2:15 tour. <b>THEN</b> I got the following from the ticket agency:

<i>The reserved tickets have to be picked up at least one hour before the confirmed admission time. Please contact therefore a separate desk in the TICKET-CENTER , which is signed.

Recommended time needed from the TICKET-CENTER up to the castles:
20 minutes to the Castle of Hohenschwangau
40 minutes to the Castle of Neuschwanstein

You have to be at the turnstiles, which are located at the entrance of the castle, at your confirmed admission time, otherwise you miss your tour.</i>

Okay, so I have something like 18 minutes to get to the ticket center, and an hour to collect the tickets and climb the hill. (Whew.)

Robespierre,
Are you touring Neuschwanstein first? If so, you will need to hustle to get there in time for your tour. If you are visitng Hohenschwangau first, it is an easy 10 minute walk to the ticket center. We arrived less than an hour before our reservation time (probably 45 mins) quickly received our tickets from the Advance Sales window, and walked over to Hohenschwangau where we waited 20-30 minutes for the tour to begin. Afterwards, we lined up to take the shuttle to Neuschwanstein. There was a large tour group in front of us and so we waited close to 30 mins. to get on. The ride to the top takes only 5-10 mins., and then we had time to walk over the famous bridge and look back at the castle before we actually toured it. Our reservation times were 11:30am and 1:30pm respectively.
I hope this helps.

Do both castles if time allows. Hohenschangau is very nice and has more real world furniture.

The walk up the hill to Neuschwanstein is no &quot;walk in the park&quot;. I did this in my 20s but did not try it on next visits in my 40s and 50s. Be prepared to work up a sweat. Take the horse carriage and enjoy the trip up!

Take the shuttle bus to Neuschwanstein--the horse drawn carriage gets boring pretty quickly, and it can be a bit smelly.

Do not attempt the hike (trek) up to Neuschwanstein castle from the village unless you are in really good physical condition. If it is a hot day, it would be really unpleasant. The walk up to Hohenschwangau Castle is much easier.

Keep in mind that, if necessary, you can probably change your reservation time--they were very helpful to us when we were there two years ago.

<b>I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.</b>

Thanks to all for the responses - since there are several different times for various parts of the journey, let me summarize my understanding and invite you to chime in if I got it wrong.

F&uuml;ssen station to Ticket Center, 15 minutes by taxi.

Ticket Center to Newschwanstein, 30-40 minutes on foot, or 10 minutes by horse wagon.

How does the climb compare to Greenwich Maritime Museum to the Observatory? We did that last year without too much trouble on a 90&deg; day (we're heat-acclimated from living in Arizona for 30 years).

I would just get there and figure out the climb for yourself.

It sounds to me like you would enjoy it and the busses and horse carriages leave very frequently. No reservations needed.

Enjoy this area. Ludwig almost broke the Bavarian government building all those castles and now they are getting it all back from us tourists!