Saturday, October 13, 2012

Schloss Lichtenstein



Today Betsy & I went to another romantic castle –Schloss (“Castle”) Lichtenstein, which is only 30km from Tübingen.  It was a great half-day trip.  It has been rainy and cloudy for the last week, but today the clouds cleared and we had spectacular views of the fall colors.  The guided tour was very friendly.  And surprisingly it was in English, because everyone in our small group spoke English.

After the castle, we visited a nearby cave.  The Swäbish Alb, is a limestone plateau and the foothills of the Alps.  This limestone makes for dramatic white cliffs above the valleys and allows for some caves.  The cave we went into was large –about 300m in length and having 5 large rooms.  For a few years one of the royals, for which Castle Lichtenstein was built, lived in the cave.  The caves inspired the book Lichtenstein, which in turn inspired the local Duke to build the castle in the romantic style during the 1840s.  This is about the same time as Berg Hohenzollern and Neuschwanstein, and many other fairy-tale castles in Germany.

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