After another long day in the Gutless Wonder, we arrived at our next stop long after dark.

And this was it! Day ahhh 6 was spent entirely in Achensee, Austria and bloody hell is it nice - very reminiscent of Milford Sound in New Zealand. Katie and I drove past here last Christmas during our stay in Innsbruck, about an hour round the road from here. It was late at night at the time but we kept it mind as the whole area was looked pretty stunning, even in the dark.

Achensee is the largest lake in the state of Tyrol (in the Austrian Alps) and has a maximum depth of 133 metres. The water quality is near drinking water, and on a day like this it's picture perfect! Being an alpine lake she's pretty brisky, though we did all go for a quick dip later in the day.

After a few local beers and some lunch we wandered through Achenkirch (at the northern tip of the lake) and hired a few of these!

Achensee has some 20kms of coastline. Katie had already spent the morning running it and recommended we bike it.

Picture perfect. These photos really don't do it justice.

On the southwest shore of the lake is the little village of Pertisau, and nearby is the Achensee Railway - Europe's oldest steam operated cog railway running just over 6kms between the lake and a small town on the other side of the mountain.

From this point on, it started to get interesting. Being tourists, we completely ignored the no cycling sign hehe.

This walking track follows the western shore of the lake from Pertisau about 7kms back up to Achenkirch. The first half starts off really good in terms of mountain biking - good fast narrow track, not a lot of room for error else you're over the cliff and in the drink, it was good stuff!

It's a hard life :)

After that initial first half though it all got a bit beyond a joke. The cliffs were perilously closer, there were steps and tight turns galore, and ultimately we spent more time off the bikes than on them, but oh well.

We eventually made it back in one piece, though with hindsight I would've avoided that final stretch - hooray for travel insurance!

Over dinner that night we were entertained by a one-man band with his accordion, and the locals were loving him! He was cracking jokes (in German of course) and everyone was pissing themselves, except us hehe - we had no clue what was going on!

After a friggin' awesome day on the lake, we were back on the road the next morning, stopping in Innsbruck for lunch.

I don't remember there being so many street artists last time Katie and I were here.

Oh just precious ;)

We drove a further couple hours through the gorgeous Austrian countryside to...

...this, the village of Hohenschwangau near Fussen just back over the German border, which is home to Hohenschwangau Castle. This mouthful is a 19th century palace, and was the childhood home of King Ludwig II of Bavaria having been built by his father.

That's all well and good, but Ludwig decided to do one better and build his own monster of a palace across the road on the opposite cliff, and this is what most folk come here to see.

It's about a 20-minute walk up a hill (unless you bring your mobility scooter), atop which sits...

...the mighty Neuschwanstein Castle, probably better known as the Disneyland Castle seeing as this was the inspiration for it. Construction of this behemoth of a palace began in 1869, and was unfinished at the time of Ludwig's death in 1886, by which stage Ludwig had only lived in the palace for a total of 172 days.

This is probably the shot of the castle that most folk are familiar with, which can only be taken from a helicopter.

However, some pretty decent shots can be got from down in the valley. Bloody impressive huh!

The view from the castle with the little town of Schwangau in the distance.

Castles aside there's a really nice lake out back as well. Bloody great area this!