Europe trip day 20: Hohenzollern Castle

On Thursday, we decided to completely disregard my itinerary, and take a detour back up into Germany to see the Hohenzollern castle.  It was a long drive, and took a whole day out of our schedule, but it was worth it!

But first, we drove BACK into Switzerland, and along the southern shore of the Bodensee.  We had been very close to the northern shore of this lake on the second day of our trip, near Freiberg.  Ben had wanted to see it then, but we couldn't take the time.  So it was nice to have a second chance.

Ben likes to swim in lakes!  So we stopped here for him to take a dip.

Here he is jumping off a platform.

Boats along the shore.

I met a very nice couple while I was waiting on the pier.  I guess Swiss people are friendly after all.  :-)

We stopped by a market to get some Swiss cheese (after all, we are in Switzerland), before getting back on the road.
We made it up to Hohenzollern Castle in the early afternoon.  It was a pretty drive out of the mountains, and into the more rolling hills and flatter lands of central Germany.

Hohenzollern is visible from a long ways away, being at the very top of a hill overlooking the valley.

And here are a couple of cool google images:

Castles have been on this site since the 11th century, although this is basically the 3rd structure to be built.
We parked down below and took a shuttle bus up to the castle entrance.  We walked up a winding road before finding ourselves in the castle keep.
We JUST missed the English tour.  Seriously, by 2 minutes!  And they wouldn't let us in.  :-(  So we waited a half hour or so and took the German tour as well.  I understood very little of it, but it was still really cool.

Brigham and Joseph waiting for the tour, looking at the map.

View from the castle courtyard.

Mosey's up there in the window-- can you see him?

There he is!

And here's Ben and Brigham.

Brigham and Mosey in front of the chapel.

The tour was pretty crowded, so I borrowed pictures from Google instead.

The courtyard:

And now a bunch from the grounds:

Views from the castle:

On the way back, we stopped at one more castle-- Lichtenstein Castle (not to be confused with Liechtenstein Castle).  This one was pretty awesome.  It's built right on the edge of a cliff!
We drove up the mountain and saw the back side of it first.

The grounds were not at all wheelchair accessible, but Ben and the boys walked around it for a bit.
But the best views are from the valley below.  We spent a few minutes to drive down a switch-back road to the valley floor to see the castle up on the cliff.

Here are a few more pictures via Google:

And that was it for the day!  We drove south into Bavaria, and then BACK into Austria (how many times is this now?), to our hotel in Lermoos.