This very cool castle is only an hour drive south of here and is actually #2 on the top 10 castles of Germany currently. VERY worth while to see, especially since it's a short drive down here!
We had planned to see a movie later in the evening and we didn't leave the house until noon and I still feel like we got to see a good amount of the castle and not be super rushed through it all. I would have liked to have had the time to walk down to the parking area from the castle rather than take the shuttle both ways, but we timed our exit and trip back to within a minute of when the movie was to start. Seriously it was a 6pm show and we walked in the door at 6:00, got popcorn and went to sit down. We didn't miss much of the opening fluff and being military movie theatre we were there before the national anthem (yeah, that is still something they do before every movie - it's nice)
So that said, here is some of the formalized history from the brochure we got
Even a shot of our parking pass...Not a bad deal - park for 2 Euro, ride the shuttle for two of us for 6.20 - round trip for two. Bargain for the whole thing. I think the tour tickets was the most expensive thing at 12 euro for the two of us.
And so starts the snap shot portion of our tour...
At the entry gates
Love the little metal waves that keep you centered in the entry... there is an almost clover leaf set of circles to actually get you TO the castle. Seriously... there were a lot of gates that would keep you out in the case of war... well defended place!
Another gate with a moat... there was no water in this one, but there was a small well like thing at the bottom of it.
double gates...
The counter weights - you will see these again because I opened the gate a little more to take the picture - they doors worked very smoothly - but they didn't affect the counterweights at all, so they are linked to the draw bridges.
Looping on itself again....
Butch was behind me and was trying to seduce me from the windows :)
When we finally did get to the top these were the gates that were to this side of the castle...
Where we were looking... turn your head, I am not in a good place to rotate this bad boy! the above was looking at this scene over the country side...
You will see that centrally located tourret in the near future...remember it... it's not on the corners like the one on the left and the one in the distance on the right... there is a reason.
very old graffiti or just signing the wall when it was worked on? Or simply just very old graffiti?
That's the walking trail you see to the left. It wound it's way down the mountain to the parking area.
There was a wedding going on when we were there... fun!!
Door to the small chapel at the entrance.
very cool locks
exterior doors to said small chapel
This turret is over the large chapel (where the couple in the prior photo were married) - and above are some of the rooms we toured. We eventually came out of the door you see on the ground floor on the left.
The Chapel story.
very pretty chapel...
doors here were a touch more ornate than on the smaller chapel.
Butch "hiding" with his e-cigarette while I was in line to go on the tour of the interior rooms...
interesting slippers we had to wear to protect the floors in our tour.
The last picture I was able to take before heading out on the tour... they didn't allow any pictures inside of the place.
It was impressive - in the courtyard we entered in on the right side about 1/2 way down the building, wound along the outer wall rooms to the far left side of the courtyard to the nursery - then doubled back through the interior rooms/halls to the door that I showed in the above picture.
The "walk" through in exterior rooms is indicated in the blue light starting on the upper right of the courtyard, circling the outer wall, lopping back on the inner rooms and out the end of the courtyard.
The only place we were able to take pictures was the cellar... which start here and we'll let you read all about it.
these are the winding stairs that I came down... then the halls wound through and under the castle....
with lots of nooks and cranny's and storage areas for weapons and other things needing cooler air - it was VERY cool and nice down there for sure!
So this picture is a good indication that we're not going to end where we started....
Again, indicating this was the way to get outside from the battlements.
There were two choices once we got to this juncture... if we had been allowed to take the left fork we would have gone down and out into a very tiny courtyard that was protected from above and had a door in close to the castle. I think they used that for protection to let people out to fight at the foot of the wall then give them protection to get back in. A back door if you will.
the stairs to the right on that juncture lead to hear... look familiar? Right in the outer courtyard. So, you could bring guns and ammo UP or you could go down and out to the base of the wall - both ways you could protect your castle. I would have used my map to circle this area, but it's behind the upper left side of the map... so totally out of sight for this purpose...
BUT look what you can do with Google maps... you can make your OWN map. Now the entrance to this and the way we walked I didn't note.. but essentially the BASEMENT walk of the blue from the top right through the basements and up to the asterisks. The battlement at the ground level is circled... its a small (?) area that is set right against the lower wall and has protection from above and from within... the asterisk indicates where the above tower is on the outer courtyard.
and back out the main gates to the garden - to the right in this picture is a garden that was locked from the gate inside the walls. It wasn't very visible and it wasn't until I was leaving through these gates that I noticed the ramp and door to the right as you exit... I took that ramp to the door...
took some pictures of the cute garden... Until Butch pointed out...
This is really a graveyard. Ok, it makes total sense why they had it locked. They don't want folks walking all over their relatives who are buried here. Fair enough! I do love graveyards however..
Here is an odd sign, eh?
So this turret is the one to the bottom left off most of the maps I have on here...
Yep, right there at 12. The tree is gone now - it's just a stump - I'm hoping it died FIRST before they dug the sample hole... as he tree was gone, why not see about making this an access point for an elevator? I applaud them for making it a bit more accessible to those with needs as those corkscrew entrances are a good hike up hill - I never did check to see how many flights of stairs that counted for
There's the poor stump that is left of the tree... sad, as I'm sure it made for a nice shady spot right before you enter the castle area.
A carriage house on the way up/down the battlement... that roof is not jointed at the top - its ONE piece of stone in a V. Very impression.
The case of the missing stairs... this cour yard in the battlement was one of two - the other had a cistern in the center with some very stagnant water in it. Looked to be ran water supplied. Butch took pictures of that one... apparently it didn't thrill me like the idea of the spiral stair case that is missing and the adorable wooden pigs with the crest in flowers.
One more parting shot with a person in there to show you the size and scope of those counter weights, not to mention the size of the door!
One of the best pull offs we noted on our way up to the castle... pretty field in front
