Day 2: Burg Eltz

Candice was nice enough to allow me to sleep in until 10:00! When I woke up, I was pretty sure it was about 1:00 and I felt a little bit like I'd been hit by a train, but I was ready to go! We spent the morning relaxing and then after lunch, we were off to Burg Eltz!

I told Candice that one thing I really wanted to do while I was in Germany was to see a couple castles. We decided to go to Burg Eltz, which we thought was only an hour away. Well, thanks to a miscommunication and a couple of lovely staus (German word for traffic jam - you better believe I learned that one after this drive!) what we had thought was only going to be an hour drive ended up being about 2.5! But we had a great time and I loved every minute of driving through the beautiful German landscape.

Burg Eltz was built in the 12th century and is located between Koblenz, and Trier, Germany. While we were there, we got to take a tour of the inside of the castle, but they did not allow photographs. Bummer! It was so cool to see everything and even though the tour guide had a super thick German accent and I had a hard time understanding her at times, the tour was very informative and I quite enjoyed it :)

The Castle is actually a little bit different than most, because it's located down a long path into a valley, and then where the castle actually stands is on it's own little hill right in the middle of the valley. It was a BEAUTIFUL walk.

Our first view of the castle! It was a little bit of a bummer that the castle was under construction, but I still LOVED it. I think castles are really amazing.

Lucky for me, Candice had been there before and she sent me some pictures of the whole thing (on the disk that I thought I lost and was relieved when I remembered where I put it!):

The courtyard. So quaint and pretty! (When I was there, the whole left side of the courtyard was all covered too.)

Alright back to my trip :)

Me and my beautiful sister and sweet little nephew, Hayes (Thanks for the pix Can!)

This is one of mine. You can see where portion of the castle has been covered up. This is also in the courtyard. One interesting thing about the castle is that over time it was actually split into multiple sections, with different families each owning a portion. That is how it remains today. The original family that first inhabited the castle still remains part of that joint ownership, which is pretty crazy considering how long it has been.

Everything was SO TINY! It is weird to think about how people have just gradually gotten taller as time has passed. The beds, doors, chairs, and stairways were all so small. It was fascinating!

That little spout thing just below the window leads out from the toilet.... How would you like to have the unfortunate experience of being under one of those at the wrong time?! For some reason I was fascinated by that... I don't quite know why. I didn't know that "indoor toilets" existed so long ago.

It is fun to imagine actually living in a place like this. Walking these paths and living in the shadow of such a beautiful castle... Freezing through winter and not having real indoor plumbing (that last part is not so fun to think about).

This must have been a little church. It was right on the path as you go down to the castle.

After the tour, we made the long hike back up to the car for a treat :) Then we made the LONG drive home! It was really fun getting to see these places with my sister and niece and nephews. They've been living in Germany for so long now and I've always tried to picture it, so it was great to actually be able to go there and see what it is like for myself. AND of course, great to have my own personal tour guide to take me to all of the sweetest places! She pretty much mapped out our whole trip and made it really easy for me to know what to do! Thanks again Candice!

Such a pretty place.

When we got back to Candice's house we all just relaxed and got ready for the next day. I was pretty excited... We were going to pick Brig up from school! At last!!!


To be continued....