What's the Deal with the Beales?: Mini Castle Tour

A couple of weekends ago Todd and I went on our own little castle along the Rhine tour. Well, I guess you could call it a tour, although we only saw two different castles. But, anyways, it was a nice day for a drive so we took advantage.

A view we passed on our drive - The Rhine River

The first castle we went to was Burg Eltz. Todd had flown over it and thought it was a great looking castle. He has named it one of his favorite castles by looks alone. Unfortunately for us, its under construction or rather restoration. 2011 Burg Eltz has a big campaign called Restoration 2011 (or something like) to try to restore and maintain the castle. Whether its really restoration or construction, it has a couple ugly eye sores - the huge crane & the side scaffolding. We didn't even bother going inside this castle because we've agreed that we want to come back when they are done restoring it. Hopefully next summer. The cool thing about Burg Eltz is that its completely surrounded by woods (the reason why Todd likes it so much I think) and the same family has been living in it since the 13th century or something like that. I'm not sure how much of the castle they open up for viewing, but apparently the family lives in just one of the wings while (maybe) the rest is open for viewing.

I took a picture of a picture of what its supposed to look like.

On our way back up to the car we came across this GIANT slug. I know you can't really tell how big it is, but its the absolute biggest slug I've ever seen!!!

Trying to show the size comparison using Todd's hand

Our second castle for the day was Reischburg Cochem. This castle is on a hilltop in the town of Cochem. Its right along the Rhine River with multitudes of vineyards around town. We actually did the tour for this one. It was nice, but I must make a little complaint - it was about 5 Euro each and we only got to see about 10 rooms. It would have really been nice to go up in the tower. Oh well. Reischburg Cochem is now owned by the town itself making it just a tourist attraction (as far as I'm concerned). We did see a bridal party taking pictures there, I'm unsure if they actually got married there or not.

Here's some pictures from the tour ....

This some sort of man-mermaid-antler thing. I believe its supposed to protect

When this boar was alive it was over 400 lbs.!!! That sucker was huge!!

Back in the day the king (I think) would make sure to drink wine from this container. These things would be filled to the top and he would drink that whole amount everyday.