Anneke's Travels: July 22: Three German Castles!

On Saturday morning, we got up pretty early, around 8am, had breakfast, and went to find some castles. My dad chose three castles for us to visit.

The first castle took us about 45 minutes to get to by car. We drove through a lot of foresty areas before we got to the zig-zag bits in front of the castle. Some of the ziggy-zaggy bits were almost u-turns! My mom thought it was a little scary, but I thought it was fuuun!!

The best part of the drive was when we finally saw the castle on the hill (and another fun part was when there was no speed limit and my dad zooooomed down the road!). The castle looked so cool!! This was the first castle I had ever seen in real life and I thought that castles would be bigger and grander, but it it was still cool.

The first castle was called Castle Thurant. It was super old and had some nice gardens and places to sit and enjoy the view. The weirdest part of it was in one of the towers there was a metal door on the floor leading to the dungeon and there was a sign pointing to it saying Real Human Bones. We could see them from where we were standing. Apparently the owners of the castle didn't want to disturb the resting place of the bones.

The spot where this castle was built has been used for castles for a very long time and there are some really, really old castle ruins underneath the bits you can see in the pictures, and those parts are also super old. Some of it was rebuilt after WWII.

The view of Castle Thurant, the first castle we went to

The view from inside Castle Thurant.

Me next to the castle!

A cannon!

I like this view of the castle ruins.

Hendrik and Dad looking around.

Real human bones!

Poor Daddy!

From one of the towers!

Help me!

Look how pretty it is!

On our way to the second castle, we saw this sign in a parking garage. It means Exit.

Look at the street sign!

We didn't get a picture of the outside of the second castle. I forget what this castle was called. It was my second favourite castle because I loved the gardens. They were so pretty and lively and they had such a beautiful view of the Rhine river.

We could only go inside about one third of this castle and when we went inside, we were not allowed to take any pictures at all and we had to wear huge slippers over our shoes so that we would not damage the floors because everything was super old.

I'm so high up!

Looking good, Mom and Dad!

It's a dragon-drainage pipe!

This is a beautiful view of the gardens!

Nice gardens, eh?

The third castle of the day was my favourite. It was called Castle Marksburg. We got a guided english tour around this castle and it was very old and people actually still live in parts of it which I did not know before.

When there were servants in the castle, they all lived in the kitchen together and just slept on the floors. A lot of different rulers owned this castle throughout the centuries and some of them owned it twice. Most of them had to sell it because they didn't have enough money to run it.

In the bedroom there is a very small bed because people back then sat up sleeping because they thought that if they laid down while sleeping they would die so they sat up to sleep. I don't know how you would do that because I need to lay down to sleep.

From the castle walls, you can see the whole village and Rhine river valley. Anyone who took their boat down the Rhine in that area would have to pay a toll to the people who ruled from the castle.

I most enjoyed the dining room because there was one funny part. There is a bathroom that is really close to the dining table and you had to keep the door to the bathroom open while you were using the bathroom because it was polite to stay a part of the dinner conversation while you were going to the bathroom. I think that this is really weird and might have been a bit stinky for the people eating dinner!!

In the armor room, there were a whole bunch of suits of armor and in one of the pictures down below, the Roman outfit was my favourite because it has a mini skirt hahah!!

We learned in the dungeon that if you did something bad, you had to wear a mask that showed what you did and it had a weight attatched to it so that it pulled your head down and you would would literally be hanging your head in shame. Everyone would laugh at you and stare at you and throw rotten food at you. We also learned that they didn't really torture people with the torture equipment that they had in the dungeon but it was there to scare them so that they would confess right away. There was a really large painting on the wall that showed how the torture items worked so that people would get really scared!

After we walked through the castle, Hendrik and I each got to choose an ijs treat from the freezer in the restaurant. Mom got a radler and dad got a beer. I got an oreo ice cream bar.

There were a couple more castles in the area but we didn't go to them because we ran out of time and we were getting dappled and drowsy and ready to eat dinner!