Castles and Switzerland

Friday the 8th, we all kinda split up and headed for the far regions of the continent.  John, Terri and ourselves headed for Haut Koenigsburg Castle and the kids all headed out for Basel Switzerland.

The kids took something like a 5am train, not really sure since I was dead asleep when they left.  Their plan was to head to Basel and hopefully be back by dinner time.  Basel is only 40 mins away by train so it makes it a really easy day trip from Colmar.

We got up at a leisurely time and drove up to the town of Selestat and took the windy drive up the mountain to the castle.

Yep, we drove by the Statue of Liberty on our way to Selestat.  Damn GPS!

Mostly restored and renovated during the early 1900s, while not totally accurate is is still a breathtaking example of fortifications of its type.  Definitely worth visiting if you are in the area.

The self guided tour takes most of an hour to walk through, I think we took a tad longer staring at all of the cannon and armour that has been donated to the museum.  Not the best collection in the world, but some cool stuff.  The views from the top of the bastion are stunning, on a clear day you can not only see into Germany, but all the way to Basel Switzerland.

John and Terri in the upper gardens

Nirta in the ovens!

A 14th century iron bound strongbox.

 The kids, we had no idea what they were up to...

In the evening they arrived home and regaled us with tales of incredibly overpriced pizza and coffee($8 for a small espresso) and some truly awe inspiring bad beer.  The evening progressed into a nasty round of drinking everything in the house, a game we paid a large price for later...

Skip and Karen leave Colmar today, we wish we had more time with them!  Safe travels.

All in all, a fun day!