Germany Day 15 - One last day of Castles

Plans changed at the last minute before we started for the day when Paul learned there were giant redwood trees and a minor castle ruin in the area. Yeah, those big trees from California are in Germany! Some fancy noble over 150 years ago thought that redwoods looked cool and started growing them over here. Tragically, it was a freak hot day, over 94 degrees, and by the time we got to the ruins, about halfway to the trees, we were brain-fried and overheating.

The good news was that the ruins, called Albeck were WAY cooler than described on the internet. We had the castle ruins all to ourselves, and it was cool to see some pictures/descriptions along the route about how the castle was attacked and such. I have no idea why anyone attacked castles back then, since they were all built on super steep hills or mountains with really clever defense structures!

After the ruins, we headed off to Hohenzollern Castle. It was gigantic and super fancy, and in typical german-fashion, it turns out that it was really just a show off castle back then, and used only once a year to go hunting in the area. It was amazing to tour the lavishly styled rooms and think that this was just their hunting lodge. Crazy, stinking wealthy nobles!

The castle and the tour were great, however, Paul of all people had a headache through the whole thing. Paul rarely has headaches, so it was kinda concerning. I had unfortunately taken all the medicines into our airbnb, so we were without headache pills. By the end of the tour, I also had a small headache, so we were starting to get a bit miserable.

It was one of those moments on vacation when you debate just heading home, wasting precious sight-seeing time, or you suck it up and try to squeeze in more memories. Well, Lichtenstein castle was on the way home, so we decided that we would at least look at it on the exterior, before heading home.

Sadly, by the time we paid for parking, my headache was raging bad. I was so miserable that I didn't even look at the castle, I couldn't walk without making the pain worse, so I sat on a bench by the parking lot and Paul went to check out the castle alone. Yeah, I skipped out on a castle! That's how bad it was.

After briefly checking it out (you had to pay even to see the courtyard, so Paul didn't see much), we headed for the car. I had high hopes that we could get back to the airbnb without me barfing from the pain. Unluckily, there was a HUGE detour around a closed road that added about 30 minutes to the trip back home and Paul had to pull over for me to...admire the wildflowers. Sigh....

Back to the airbnb for pills and sleep, but still full of energy and excitement for more adventures tomorrow!