More Castles!

I would love to live in a little castle like this one at Guttenberg!

This is a close-up of the window from the photo above.
It looks like the bottoms of wine glasses - there were
several windows like this at this castle and at the
following one.

On June 30th, we drove to Guttenberg Castle and were so excited as we drove up to the castle entrance! What a cool looking place to spend the day! Though throughout the drive to the castle that morning, we could often see a castle on the hill top surrounded by vineyards....and this is not where we ended up. Still, we were at a castle so after finding a parking spot, we started along the path towards the main entrance....all the signs were only in German, which was not a good sign for us. We found this set of stocks along the path and had each of the boys pose for a picture. I chose to post Josiah's because he acted the part of one gone crazy from the stocks!

     After realizing that we weren't going to find anyone that spoke English, that our tour-guide options were 'alles auf Deutsch' and that we weren't at the castle we wanted to be at anyway, we set off to find a place for lunch! Again, small village area so we found the only place open besides a bakery to stop.  We also chose this place along the river because we wanted help with figuring out the ferry - we could see the castle now that we had seen earlier, but a river separated us from getting easily to it. The photo below is at the restaurant....where we were all so thirsty and didn't know how to order water.  Well, we knew how to order water, what we didn't know is that unless you specify what kind of water you want, you get the bubbly kind of mineral water....which the boys don't care for but drank with thankful hearts.  We now know that "Stille Wasser" is what we want and we know how to find that on the various options of bottled water in the markets!

As most restaurants in Germany do have, we sat in the outdoor area....another project for Tracy next fall.  It was a great shaded area by grapevines over a wire mesh.  The boys noticed lots of little white Christmas lights so I'm sure the place looks magical at night.  Also, when the waitress realized that we were from America, she assigned us another waitress who spoke very good English.  She even had the slang down!  This is where we learned that you have to pay per packet of ketchup that you use for your fries.....anyone that knows us realizes we are in for some major issues.  We learned that a little too late on this particular day.  I think we'll begin carrying our own bottles of ketchup with us in the future!

 To get the car and family across on the ferry only cost around five or six Euros - the castle looked cool enough to give it a try.

We got off the ferry to see this!  First American sign since arriving!

This was the view of the castle from the ferry - the hillside is much steeper than this picture looks. It was a nerve-wracking drive up to the castle with switch backs during the climb.  Not only that, the European roads tend to be quite narrow with generally room for only one vehicle at a time to get through.  Tracy backed up a time or two for vehicles coming down the road - at a very good clip, I might add!

     Burg Hornberg is privately owned and would be a beautiful place to spend a weekend - there is a hotel on the grounds with rooms overlooking the Neckar River....for five Euros more than rooms that don't!  Something I figured would cost quite a bit more/room!  A wedding was taking place the day we were there - the two younger boys were hiking on a nearby hillside and watched part of it.

     Walking through a little wine shop/museum where we parked our car, we got to see all of the different weaponry that was found on the property through the years - many items dating back to the Roman civilization.  Again it was all in German so we gleaned what we could and decided to walk the grounds a bit.  The woman working at the wine shop was able to speak English like we currently speak German so it was slow going yet enjoyable.  The boys were about ready to leave when we saw a sign that said, "Enter At Your Own Risk" - what more of an invitation for fun can you give four boys???  So for 1 Euro/person, we entered the turnstile and explored Burg Hornberg for the next few hours.

View driving in...on what felt like the side of a cliff!

View of the Neckar Valley/River.  All the wine sold on the grounds comes from the vineyards along the hillside - one of the oldest vineyards in all of Europe....from what we gathered in our time at the wine shop/museum.

A close-up of the spot the boys were standing in the above picture.  (I'm still trying to figure out how to get the pictures where I want them....the one directly above jumped in a place I didn't want it.)

We figured that the doors on the left were for the horses to go through - we could see ruts in the rocks leading up to that door.

The next several photos are from inside the "Enter At Your Own Risk" part - and yes, we had a hard time containing the boys - there really were places that were accidents waiting to happen.  We are pretty sure Josiah is a cat with nine lives!  He has a shirt that says, "I do all my own stunts" - could have been wearing it this day.  All of them for that matter.  This was a boy's dream adventure - no tour guides to slow you down is what one of them said.

Climbed to the tippy-top of this - I had to count steps to keep from getting sick - can't stand open steps,
 especially after several flights of them!

This picture was taken to give my mind a mental break with all of the stairs, quite worn and rickety.

 We explored all of these areas...and many more.  All the while imaging life when

this was flourishing.  I would have loved a tour guide, but the boys

rather enjoyed making up their own stories.

Yes, their dad tried to help them get into the second floor of these structures though boards were falling through - I climbed to a point and froze in my spot basically.

We pictured being attacked and having to fire flaming arrows through these small openings.  At several of these spots, we could see rocks hollowed out at their centers jutting out from the castle wall.  One wondered if they were toilets?  :)  That's a long way down if you fall backwards!  Another wondered if it was for pouring hot tar on the enemy.  It was obvious though, by the benches at the sides of each opening, that someone/s sat guard at this post.

Really cool old candlestick holders - yet one more

project for Tracy!  They were all along one wall.