Germany Day 10: A Bajillion Glorious Castle Ruins

Today's theme was castle ruins. Thankfully, none of them were tourist traps, and, in fact, we hardly saw anyone else at any of the castle ruins. It was SOOOOOOO nice.

We started the day by checking out a string of castle ruins on the other side of the river from yesterday's Dilsberg castle. Back in the day, German nobility liked to brag about their wealth by having a castle right on the river...and kinda feuding/bragging/etc. with other nobility by having the castles smooshed up next to each other. They would also all try to control the river below the castles with tolls and such. Our modern society doesn't do any of these types of things anymore, because we learned valuable lessons from history. Cough. Sorry, still sick....laugh.

Anywho, we parked and went to see 2 of 4 castle ruins (the other two are privately owned still and/or not worth seeing). We hiked through some forest paths and stopped first at Hinterburg Castle. Not only were we there all alone, but you were allowed to climb up the still-functional tower to get an amazing view. I loved looking at the ruins and using my imagination to figure out what it used to be like. It was also beautiful views.

Then we kept hiking on the forest path to the ruins of Schadeck castle. That was also a cool castle ruins with some tower ruins that you could climb. The view from that castle showed all the other castles in the area really well, so it was really pretty. After that, we had lunch at the parking lot while staring at all the castle ruins. It was lovely.

Next up was the Eberach Castle ruins. Actually, it was the ruins of 3 different castles in one location. Sigh...I am in heaven over here. The castles originated from 1200 A.D. and onward. We had to walk up a mountain again, through the forest. It was, of course, delightful, and we didn't see anyone until the very end. We thoroughly explored all of the castle ruins and the beautiful scene of the river valley below us for as long as we wanted. It was very relaxing and super chill.

On our hike back to the car, we realized that we weren't going down but instead we were going up. It was one of those moments in the middle of the woods when you try not to panic about being lost. Anyway, we turned around, went back to the castle ruins and figured out where we turned wrong. Thank goodness we noticed before we ended up even farther away!

We still had a bit of energy, so we went off to see one more castle ruin for the day. This time, it was off to Castle Steinsburg. This lovely castle ruin was on top of a hill, instead of a steep mountain. The whole hill, all the way up to the castle ruins, is covered in grape vine farms. It was super beautiful. In the ruins, you could go up the tower. I thought I was braver than usual, because I went all the way up, and it was WAY up there! Those stairs are steep, too! The views from the top were amazing, so we stayed up there for quite a while, just soaking up the views. Then we headed to the courtyard, where a restaurant has been built, where they serve local wine made from all those grapes on the hill. The wine was delicious. We sat and drank and just relaxed. It was lovely.

Then we were tired of German cuisine and ate at their version of an American restaurant for burgers. They actually served the fries with sauce! I wouldn't say it was ketchup, but any sauce is better than more dry fries! It was a delightful day of forest walks, castle imagining, and hardly any people. While holding my hubby's hand. :)

Cris asked me to edit this post and add the pictures so here's my contribution: I went to a bathroom a couple days ago and the urinal had a little soccer goal with a ball hanging from it. I won.