The Great Castle Tour of 2013

Friday morning Kelly left for a church "Easter Camp"  so Keith, Josh, Julie and I headed to Germany.  Our first stop was the Rhine Falls and they were beautiful.  We took a boat to get to a tiny look out point right in the middle of the falls.

From there we took three trains to Tübingen.  We had lunch, climbed the hill to the castle, had some gelatto and then headed to Hechingen where we had plans to tour a castle the next morning.

Tübingen town square

Tubingen Castle

The Neckar River 

Political expression in Tübingen, a university town.  

The view of the Hohenzollen Castle from our hotel.  Little did we know it would be the last time we would see the castle from the outside.  It was totally fogged in the next day.

Saturday we had a lovely breakfast in our cute little hotel at the foot of the castle hill, and then walked the snowy 2km up to where we caught a shuttle bus to take us the rest of the way.  The castle is one of the most famous in Germany, but it was so foggy we could hardly see a thing.  We took a tour and it was beautiful inside and interesting to hear about it's  history. It belongs to a family from which 10 kings of Prussia and Germany came. 

The castle was suppose to look like this,

and this.

But instead looked like this.

After the tour we hiked back down the hill, took a taxi to the train station and said good bye to Julie.

Keith, Josh and I headed to Reutlingen where we found a great hotel right by the train station. The town was full of shoppers, getting ready for Easter the next day. We found some chinese food, saw the cathedral and the medieval city, and called it a day.

Sunday was a spectacular day.  The Easter Bunny came to our hotel room and brought Josh a chocolate bunny that looked just like the one that Keith got from work, except this one had been in a back pack for three days and was just a crumbled up mess.  The bus driver gave Josh a nice little choclate bunny later that day that made him feel more loved by the bus driver than his parents,  Wah, wah, wah.

Poor Josh and his broken bunny.

Luckily the bus driver loves him.

We headed out to the next castle on our tour and this one was not so easy to get to.  We took a bus that dropped us off in the middle of no where and the driver told us to just keep walking, turn right, and then left.  It was snowing and cold and there was not a single sign.  We were sure we were on the wrong path.  We finally made our way and it was well worth nearly freezing in the middle of no where.

Finally made it to the Lichtenstein Castle.

The castle was amazing and the snow and fog made it look kind of eery. (my favorite picture of the trip)

Easter dinner on the castle grounds.

This picture is off the internet,the rest are mine, but it shows what it would look like without the fog and snow.

Sunday afternoon we took the train to Stuttgart where we went to a beautiful cathedral and the last castle of our trip.  We spent the night in Stuttgart and woke up Monday morning to the first sunny day in a week.  No Julie, no castles to see, great timing.

The new Stuttgast castle

Stuttgart Art Museum