Castles, Castles and More Castles

A few weeks ago we decided to visit another castle. Doug's parents were here for a visit and we wanted to do something close to home and inexpensive. The Netherlands has a wide variety of castles. They are literally on top of one another. I stole borrowed this map from a website I use to search castles we want to visit. Each red dot represents a castle. Although there are "castles" you can tour in the United States, they are not the CASTLES you can view throughout Europe. Most of the castles in the U.S do not qualify as medieval castles and after doing a bit of "googling" about what makes a castle a castle, I never realized all the classification that a castle can fall under (but I won't bore you with a history lesson. If you're interested you can find tons searching the internet. )  We have really enjoyed the experiences of seeing this piece of history.

While living here we have visited Viaden Castle in Luxembourg, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castle in Germany and two castles here in the Netherlands (which I realized I never blogged about so here are some pictures of those too!)

Ammersoyen Castle

 If you're really into castles (since I never blogged with all my pictures you can view this dutch website with lots of photos of Ammersoyen Castle by clicking on "fotoboek").

Heeswijk Castle; which we actually toured inside

More pictures of the Heeswijk castle here.

Anyway, back to our most recent visit to a castle. We decided to travel about an hour south of us to Loevenstein Castle. As far as the castles that we have visited in the Netherlands, we enjoyed this one the most because they had a self guided tour. As you walked from room to room in the castle there were TV screens set up and you could choose a language.....YEAH ENGLISH......and listen to some history. There were also typed English papers in each room describing the room, it's use and different features. The other castles we have toured were just that, a tour where you see the castle. This time we actually felt like we were able to learn some things about it.

The day we were there, it just so happened that people were dressing up as soldiers and walking around outside. That was an added bonus to our visit.

There was added fun too....Doug being goofy and crossing the drawbridge to enter the castle.

 We spent hours walking all over inside. Ella had a blast walking solo too!

YIKES...we all look a little rough in this picture....but we did have fun!

 After climbing VERY steep steps Ella, Doug and I made it up to the watch tower. It was quite high up and the view was pretty spectacular.

But being that high up without any glass in the windows and only bars made this mommy a bit nervous.....however Ella loved it. She kept yelling out the window to the people below.

And before leaving we made a quick stop at the gift store. If Ella had been a little older I'm sure she would have begged for this....but we settled for a photo shoot instead!

Princess Ella