From Salzburg, we drove to Memmingen. Rather than stay on divided four lane highways, we used well-paved two lane mountain roads. We used these roads so we could pick up our tickets for the Neuschwanstein Castle the next day. Marcia had made reservations and we would have needed to arrive two hours before our reservation time, so we hoped to avoid the need to get up early and be at the Castle two hours early. Marcia went to the ticket office was told she had to return the next day, no advance tickets for the online reservations.
We used the autobahn to go to our the Riku Hotel in Memmingen. As mentioned in a previous blog, drivers of the German cars zipped by at 90-100 mph. It was fun to put the metal to the metal for short stretches. I’ve enjoyed driving our French car. The steering is precise and the car doesn’t feel as though the five of us and our gear is too much weight.
Leaving Memmingen in the morning was complicated since the public garage where we parked the car was closed on Sunday. At the hotel we were given an electronic token that was supposed to open the garage door and lift the gate. No such luck. In the garage there was a group of six college age young people who had been at an outdoor music festival. Their car was parked in the garage and they had called the phone number on the booth inside the garage. No answer. I went back to the hotel and explained the garage was closed and that I was unable to get the garage door to open. I followed the clerk’s directions and went back to the garage, again the door did not move. After the second try, the hotel clerk kindly offered to go with me to the garage. She brought a second electronic token. She watched as nothing happened when I inserted my token. We traded tokens and the new one worked.
Going back and forth to the garage resulted in a delay of 45 minutes. This meant we did not arrive at the castle two hours before our reserved time. The ticket agent informed Marcia her reservation for the two castles and the museum was cancelled because we did not arrive in time. This turned out to be another time that plan B was better than the initial plan. Since the online reservation did not require a deposit Marcia saved money by only purchasing only the tour of Neuschwanstein Castle (click on link for more info on the history of the Castle). The 90-minute tour was perfect for our collective attention span. 
