Parisian castles and the Mosel valley
Hi sweethearts,
I'm super busy but I'm trying to keep up with you all.
Last week, we had a long weekend so we decided to go to Paris and then to Germany. My grandparents used to live in Paris, so that's why I went there already a billion times. We didn't want to visit the entire city once again so we visited all the castles around the city. You can check out all my hairstyles on my social media. Travel along with me, guys!
Day 1: Paris city
We first stopped at the Chateaux de Vincennes. This is a pretty castle close to where my grandparents used to live. I'm not going to bore you with some history-facts, but it was first build in the 14th century. How cool is that?
After that we went to Monmartre. This is the hill above Paris where you have a beautiful view over the city. You can also visit the Sacre Coeur church there. It's a stunning and big church, right on top of the hill. To be honest, on the inside it's pretty empty and there are a lot of other cooler churches in Paris to visit... But this one's so special because of the gorgeous view.
Day 2: Chateaux de Fontainebleau in the morning, Chateaux de Courances in the afternoon
In the morning of our second day, we visited the castle of Fontainebleau. It reminded me of the Louvre castle a bit. It was built in the middle ages and has been used ever since by some important kings and queens. Louis XV has married there (he's the father of the famous Louis the 14th, who build Versailles).
Look at this gorgeous garden. It's so peaceful there. The water's super clear and the big fish eat bread from your hand. My mom gave to the fishies all our bread, bye bye lunch. We're veggies for a reason, right? "Fish are friends, not food"- Haha!
At the ticket service of the castle, we found out about another castle, not so far away from this one. We decided to give it a go and visit that one as well.
It's named Chateaux de Courances. You can't visit it all the time, since the owners still live in the chateaux.
Oh how I'd love to live in a castle! I mean, Look at the view. At my place, we don't have an open view and I really miss that.
I think that we should have more castles in Belgium, so that I could visit all of them in my free time. In the Parisian area only, you have about 10 castles to visit. In Belgium, we don't even have like 5 of them. I'm a total geek and one of my favorite things to do is to go visit some castles. I just love the beauty of them.
Day 3: Chateaux de Vaux-le-Vicomte in the morning and Chateaux de Chantilly in the afternoon
The Chateaux is located in such a peaceful area. You wouldn't believe that you're like 30km afway from Paris, when you're in the castle. It's so green out there. Just gorgeous.
For me, this is some major interior inspo. I really don't want my house to actually look like this, but hey I just enjoy looking at it. Maybe when I buy my first house, I should get an extra room, that I could style like this one, just to look at haha! It's so lovely and elegant. I would love to pretend to be a queen every day, just for a while.
Can we just take a second to look at the entrance of the castle? it's so fierce! What I really loved about the castle is that the central place is a huge hallway. Fom the entrance, you can see through the entire catle, to look at the gorgeous garden. This castle used to be the castle of Louis the 14th's architect. Louis was pretty jealous at him and wanted to have a castle even more gorgeous than this one, so he asked his architect to build Versailles for him, inspired by this castle!
In the afternoon we had some extra time, so we decided to visit the last castle, the castle of Chantilly.
The castle is famous for the horse-shows. We didn't have enough time to visit the part where they train the horses and give the shows... But the castle itself was pretty enough on it's own. It also had a huge garden. The garden itself wasn't that interesting...but it's just cool that it's sooo huge.
Again: major interior inspo. I guess I'm obsessed with the white-golden walls or something. It's just so pretty. Don't you want to just go sit in these cute chairs? They looked so comfy and soft!
This painting really catched my eye. How funny is that? Look at the kid's eyes, I think it's hilarious!
So, this was everything for Paris... Now let's go to Germany!
In the weekend, after Paris, we went to the Mosel Valley in Germany. To be honest, Germany never really interested me... and I pretty much swore to never go to the Mosel valley (since I think it's so not interesting)... but hey, I had the opportinity to travel and get away from home again. So I just had to go along with my parents (I really love travelling and totally hate staying at home).
Day 1: Hiking the "Mosel-trail" to Beilstein and walking on the Geierlay bridge
The Mosel valley is famous for all the wine. You can hike days and days above the Mosel river, through the wineyards.
That day, it was like 33 degrees celcius so it was really hot...but it was a beautiful day with clear blue skies so we decided to go hiking with our dog Romeo.
This is a cute typical town of the region, it's called "Beilstein".
After hiking (and cooling down on a terrace with a big ice cream) we went to the longest hanging bridge of Germany. It's called the "Geierlay" bridge. It's 360 meters long and 100 meters high.
I'm going to be honest here, I'm super afraid of heights. My mom convinced me that I would never-ever dare to walk on that bridge. I believed her... but after a while, I wanted to get over myself and try it out. When I saw the bridge in real life, I wasn't that scared anymore. I compared it to the Marienbrücke (close to the Neuschwanstein castle) and convinced myself that this one was not as high as the Marienbrücke. In Neuschwanstein, I felt like I was going to die, but I just HAD to walk on that bridge. I guess I got a little bit over my fears there.
I'm not saying that I was fully enjoying walking over that bridge, BUT: I did it, that's all that matters. I think that this is also part of the new me. Getting over myself and trying new things out.
The last day: Hiking from Sankt Aldegund to Neef and back
Both of these pictures really sum up the Mosel Valley: Views on the river and steep hills with wine...
This was another pretty hot day but we still wanted to go hiking. They announced big storms for later that day so our hike wasn't too long, we didn't want to take the risk. Actually, it was that hot, that I had to carry Romeo a lot, he was almost melting, poor thing (great arm workout though).
Look at this puppy, cutie!
Et voila, this was my trip of the past long weekend in Paris and Germany. Did you guys enjoy this travel post?
BTW: all my pics are taken by me with my Nikon D5100 camera and Nikkor lens.
You can find my hairstyle-pictures on my instagram and facebook page: both at Stylinglikesteph!
Thank you so much for reading this blog. Stay tuned for more!
x Steph