Bucket list castles in Germany
Hi guys!
Last week we had a 3 day weekend so this means for me: I DON'T WANT TO STAY AT HOME! Haha, so we traveled to Germany. We stayed in a hotel near Koblenz. Koblenz is only about 2 and a half hours away from Antwerp so you can easily go there for a road trip in a long weekend. We started our trip on saturday morning around 7.30 a.m., so that we'd arrive there around 11 a.m.
We started the trip with the Burg Eltz castle. This is an ancient castle near the Mosel river, right in the woods. I saw it on instagram and I'd totally want to visit it. When I discovered that it wasn't actually that far away from home, I asked my parents to go there. Yes, most of my travel discoveries are actually from Instagram. Gotta love those traveling-pages!
The castle was built in the 11th century and has been the heritage of the Dukes of the Eltz ever since. You can visit it daily. Ticket's are not expensive and I'd recommend you to go on the inside of the Burg as well. It's recently renovated so it looks perfect. The interiors there are so pretty and there's a lot of weapons and costumes from knights too. I have this thing with knight's helmets. They fascinate me because I think it's really interesting how they used to think about protecting themselves while trying to make it a bit comfortable as well.
More info about the castle: https://burg-eltz.de/en/
In the afternoon, we wanted to drop off our luggage in our hotel, when we saw an arrow with "butterfly garden" on. My mom was curious and wanted to check the place out. The place is called Sayn (schloss und garten der schmetterling) . It has a butterfly garden to visit and another castle. The castle was pretty on the outside, but not that interesting on the inside... The butterfly garden was super cute! So many butterflies, flying around your head. I must admit, it wasn't easy to take photo's of them... So I was chasing them with my camera, while trying to adjust my settings, and trying not to fall into the water. Oh yeah, they had the cutest turtles there. One turtle was super friendly and my mom could pet him. He leaned forward to her, with his head, probably asking for more!
Here I found a butterfly who was frindly enough not to move for a second. I'm not the best at micro shots, especially not with constantly moving animals, but I did my best haha! Now on my computer, I have a bazillion of butterfly-shot, all for my obsessed mom!
Do you know the German word for butterfly? It's schmetterling, probably the ugliest word in history! This reminds me of the youtube-hit of people translating words from different languages to German words. I mean, how ugly is this word compared to "butterfly" or "papillon". I'd call my daughter papillon, because it's such an elegant word. "Schmetterling" is rather agressive!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_xUIDRxdmc Here's the link to the hilarious video!
On day 2 we had a lazy day on the boat. Which was fine by me because I adore boats!
This is the city of Koblenz. The city itself is not that interesting. It doesn't have much to see or do. BUT: it has a million castles close to the city so it's great to find a hotel inside the city or close to the city.
This is the Schloss Stolzenfelz, which we also discovered while boating... I wanted to go visit it but we didn't have enough time on our trip left. So: now I have a new item on my travel-bucket list!
On the third day, we went to my next travel-bucket-list-place. The next castle: Schloss Drachenburg in Koeningswinter.
The castle is high on top of a mountain so we were lazy and took the train to go up. The ticket was 10 euros. We first went up to the hill, to watch the beautiful view over the area and then we went to the stop of the castle itself.
You could also skip the train and just hike there, it's not that high, but in summer it can get pretty hot so prepare yourself for a workout.
The view over the area of the Rhine river. Lovely, isn't it? So much green! This view is the veiw behind the castle, on the top of the mountain.
THE Drachenburg castle! I have no words to describe this place. It's so pretty and magical. The castle reminded me
a bit about Harry Potter or something. Inside the castle, you can visit a couple of full furnitured rooms. All very pretty and inspiring to see. I love visiting castles because I love the ancient interiors. This castle is not that old, it's from about 1880 but the interior is classical for that time. Oh and look at this view!
More info about the castle and the area: http://www.schloss-drachenburg.de/index.php/en/
After this one, I couldn't get enough of castle-visiting so we went to another one haha nerdalert and I love it!
The castle was near Cologne and it's called Augustusberg. The sad thing was that we couldn't take pictures from the inside of the castle, so I stole a shot from Pinterest to give you guys an image! source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/783837510118324851/
Surrreality to the max! There is so much marble here, that the ceilings would collide, so they have made fake marble walls in between the real marble. I can not describe the feeling I had, while looking at this hallway. I just got the chills!
Around the castle there is a lovely garden which reminded me about Versailles near Paris. And to be honest, it was actually inspired by the French gardens so my intuition was right.
I think that for the inhabitants of this town, it could be a great place to picnick during spring or summer. Wouldn't that be romantic! Haha!
More info: http://www.schlossbruehl.de/en_home
So this was my 3day trip to Germany, visiting a couple of castles that were too pretty for words.
Do you guys love castles too?
X Steph