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For a storybook-worthy vacation in Europe, head straight to Bavaria. Book a room at Burg Colmberg, a 14th-century castle rising from a rocky crag above a tiny village. It offers an eclectic collection of rooms tucked throughout a warren of crooked hallways, hidden staircases, and cozy sitting nooks. Be sure to visit the postcard-perfect Neuschwanstein Castle, resplendently perched atop a mountain, and take the time to tour Hohenschwangau, the castle in which Mad King Ludwig II actually lived. The latter is a more modest pile of battlements on a smaller nub of a hill in the valley below. What it lacks in the carefully crafted pomp and circumstance of Neuschwanstein which Ludwig II never lived to see completed it more than makes up for in homeyness and history.