Despite the aforementioned car troubles, Josh and I had a mission to go do some sight seeing today. I have wanted to go see Burg Eltz for quite awhile. It is on the cover of the Rick Steves Germany book and Rick Steves has stated it is his favorite castle exterior in all of Europe. It is only about a 45 minute drive from where we live... so after a lazy morning, we took off to go visit. The walk to the castle is beautiful. The castle is set at the bottom of a ravine, and it was a beautiful downhill walk into a lush green valley. It definitely has a beautiful approach, and I had to agree with Rick Steves, it is impressive.
The admission price includes a guided tour through the castle and a visit to the castle treasury. We were able to hop on an English tour, which was nice (as not everywhere offers English tours). I wasn't able to take any pictures of the inside. It was interesting to compare this castle to Neuschwanstein as that is still fresh in my mind. This castle (unlike Neuschwanstein) was lived in by multiple families over many centuries. It is by no means grand or elaborate. In fact there was hardly anything gold to be seen, the polar opposite of Neuschwanstein. But it was still neat to see. My mom had said after seeing the grandeur of Neuschwanstein it would be hard to compare any other castle to it. She was right.
After our tour of the castle and the treasury we had to walk back up to where we parked. The walk to the castle was easy and all downhill. The walk back to the car was a bit of a huff... and it started to rain as we were walking. Not exactly the highlight of the day. On our way to Burg Eltz we had driven by another castle, so we backtracked to that castle. Burg Pyrmont is a smaller castle and definitely not as impressive on the outside as Burg Eltz. There was no guided tour through this castle, you were free to roam about as you pleased, which was fun in a way. The exterior of the castle is a bit more rustic, but the inside has actually be used and remodeled as modern bedrooms... which kind of ruined the "castle" feel in a way for me, so I didn't take any pictures of the inside. The most fun part of Bug Pyrmont is you can climb to the top of the tower. It gives some great panoramic views of the area (which right now is quite green). In fact, you could see the top of Burg Eltz in the distance.
The pictures are a bit dark because it was raining pretty heavily by the end of our visit. BUT. We got an extra day for our weekend, and I got to check Burg Eltz off my "to-do" list.
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