Pupletts in Sweden: Germany, Austria and Prague (28 Oct - 4 Nov)

We woke pretty early to leave our apartment in Frankfurt, but our car had been blocked in by other cars in the carpark. We decided to load our bags and hope that someone came along to move the other cars. It was a 'carpark' for the apartments (I used quotes as it was actually just an open area between buildings that cost us 20 euro to park in for the night).

While we were loading, another couple arrived with a couple of staff members and pointed to the car next to ours. It turned out that they were blocked in also and the cars behind us belonged to the staff., Fortunately they moved them and cleared some space, but it was a pain to back out into a tiny gap between all the cars while the staff called out random, and often conflicting, advice.

We drove near this lovely named town, which is just over the French border.

We got a decent speed on the Autobahn (speed in bottom left - 155km/h)

Our first stop was Berg Frankenstein (Frankenstein Castle) in the Odenwald. It is believed that this is the castle that was the inspiration for the Frankenstein novel. The castle is open and free to tourists, but it not actually an established tourist site with facilities - which we found pretty odd for such a famous castle. To make matters worse, we arrived in the middle of Halloween celebrations - the castle had hosted a Halloween party the night before, so it was full of tents and being cleaned up and prepared for the next party. There wasn't much to see, which was disappointing, but it was still cool to visit Frankenstein's Castle.

Mobs with flaming torches head this way

First view of the castle

Path down into the forest at the entrance to the castle

Us at the path

Sculpting on the end of the path

Tower

Entrance to the main part of the castle which was blocked off

Peeking through the blocked door

Us in front of the gate

Castle Chapel

Tents, bars and decorations for Halloween

After finishing up at Frankenstein castle, we headed down towards the Austrian border and our next castle - Lichtenstein.

Schloss Lichtenstein is a castle that is built as a tourist attraction in the idea of a Fairy Tale castle. It was built in 1840. The name means "Shining Stone".

Flags in the carpark

The kids were highly excited about seeing another castle (can you tell the sarcasm?) and Alana even collapsed into a boneless heap so she didn't have to walk up the hill to the castle. The castle didn't look like too much from the outside, but once we paid to enter the courtyard we were all impressed.

Alana turning to wood so she didn't have to go to the castle

Cameron was equally excited, but slightly better equipped

The outside of the castle

Schloss Lichtenstein

Rear of the castle

Entrance

One of the walls inside the castle

These guys were hiding under the bench hoping to look up dresses

View from the castle

The tower

The drawbridge

Us at the castle

The castle and drawbridge

Castle Lichtenstein

The hidden door

Us at the castle

An awesome view of the rock that the castle stands on

The rear-most building

Cameron's hiding spot

We finished the visit with a nice Germany wiener schnitzel before heading to our next stop

Schnitzel

Our final stop before heading for our hotel was Castle Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

Unfortuantely we'd spent a little too long at Lichtenstein Castle, so we missed the last bus up to visit the castles and it was starting to get dark, but the castles were very impressive.

Neuschwanstein Castle (New Swanstone) was built in 1886 and served as the inspiration for the Disney Sleeping Beauty Castle:

The Disney Castle from our visit to Disney Land

The Legoland Neuenschwanstein Castle

We looked at up Neuenschwanstein from the bottom of the mountain, and in the low light it was hard to get good photos - luckily Kristine had her camera and tripod: