Germany Day 12: More castles and another medieval city

Today was a great day, but there *was* a tiny annoyance because our next airbnb host wanted to meet and greet with us before handing us the keys. They were old people, so they preferred that we be there before 7pm. When we looked at our plans, that was impossible, so we managed to get them to compromise for 8:30pm. However, that just meant that we were looking at the time more than we usually do, which can put a damper on things.

First up, we went to Harburg Castle. I LOVED this castle! It was super beautiful, and it's still a residential home for some German Prince sometimes, so it was interesting to see how that works in an old castle. The tour for this beautiful castle was fascinating: they had a clever wooden ball thing to make shooting cannons easier back in the olden days. They also had a TON of different prisons. There was a prison for enemy knights (kinda decent), a prison for local villagers (not very nice), a pit for really bad prisoners (the longest anyone survived down there was 30 days), and a few torture chambers. This was an actual working castle for the area back in the medieval times, so it was a center for justice and such. That was cool to learn about and see. Also, the castle *only* burned two women at the stake for witchcraft. The staff was really proud of how progressive the castle owners were. Laugh.

After Harburg Castle, we headed to Nordlingen. This is the only city left in Germany that is completely walled in by medieval walls. It's also built in a meteorite impact crater. It's really cool seeing it on Google maps, because it's almost a perfect circle.

You can walk the entire wall system, which is over 2.5 kilometers long. If I lived in that city, I would walk the walls every day. So cool! We did a bit of the walk, and these wall walks were taller than Rothenburg's, so Paul didn't have to hunch over. Then Paul wanted to climb the church tower (350 stairs). The church had a lot of really intricately carved things all over so I looked at those while Paul climbed.

 Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, and Germany closes down most things on Sundays. So even though this was a tourist town, almost everything was closed. It was a bit of a bummer. Also unfortunately, we were pressed for time, so we strolled around a bit, but then it was time to go. I think I would like to go back to Nordlingen when it's not a Sunday and we aren't in a hurry. It wasn't as beautiful as Rothenburg, but there was still cool stuff to see (like the Ferrari and the nest of storks in the below pic).

Then we left for Ludwigsburg Residential Palace. We had to hurry a bit because the last tour was at 5pm, and then it closes down pretty quick. We made it in time to get the last tour for the day. This palace is called the Versailles of Germany, and for a good reason! It's gigantic! The tour was really interesting and we saw a lot of the rooms. I was especially excited to see a few of the servants halls and rooms. Usually, tour guides just point at almost-invisible doors and say 'that's where the servants came in and out'. This tour guide actually opened one of the doors and let us check it out a bit. That was cool!

One of the rules before we could tour was that I had to leave my purse in a locker in a locker room. Well, apparently, they take the whole closing time thing very seriously! The tour guide, near the end of the tour, warned us not to wander after the tour, because they lock everything up ASAP after this last tour of the day and people had been locked in the palace/grounds in the past. As soon as he brought us to the courtyard, he took off right away. I was worried about the locker room, but Paul was confident that they wouldn't lock it up when people were still on a tour....well, I was right this time. The locker room was locked up. The information desk room was locked up. There was no sign of any workers or the tour guide. I started freaking out, but Paul kept a cool head and we walked quickly all over the place until we randomly found a security guard to unlock the locker room for us. Seriously, why would they lock that room before the last tour was done? So weird.

After that little mini-heart-attack, we jumped in the car ASAP to try to get to our airbnb on time. We JUST made it, whew. It had great views of the mountain village and we were ready to crash!