Not our name, but our passion
Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is the ceremony where The Queen’s Guard hands over responsibility for protecting Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Palace to the New Guard. It takes place several times during the week.
The Pfalzgrafenstein Castle is the signature castle in the Rhine River of Germany. The keep of this island castle, a pentagonal tower with its point upstream, was erected 1326 to 1327 by King Ludwig the Bavarian. Around the tower, a defensive hexagonal wall was built between 1338 to 1340. Later additions were made in 1607 and 1755, consisting of corner turrets, the gun bastion pointing upstream, and the characteristic baroque tower cap. The castle would string chains across the Rhine blocking passage of shipping until a toll was paid.
This portion of the Rhine River Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing castles about every mile of the river. The best way to see the castles is to take a cruise up the river. There are also roads paralleling the river that can be driven on both sides.
Get off the road and up into some of the castles. Some of them have been converted into hotels or inns, some are ruins and some are museums. The views down into the river are also spectacular.
Even in the winter you can visit many of the castles with the added bonus that you might find yourself completely alone as we did on a subsequent trip. Well worth the trudge up the ice path.
Heidelberg Castle is a ruin in Heidelberg, Germany. The earliest castle structure was built before 1214 and later expanded into two castles circa 1294; however, in 1537, a lightning bolt destroyed the upper castle. The present structures had been expanded by 1650, before damage by later wars and fires. In 1764, another lightning bolt caused a fire which destroyed some rebuilt sections. Today the ruins are one of the most striking sites in Germany.
Heidelberg itself is a university town and a center of scientific research with several research centers. Heidelberg University founded in 1386, is Germany’s oldest and one of Europe’s most reputable universities.
The Tyrollean Alps are one of the most beautiful sections of mountains in the world, coming from the east coast of the United States I had never seen “real” mountains before. To say that I was awe inspired would be an understatement. We took a trip to the Tirol with my parents, my sister and brother-in-law and their kids in 1985. Sitting on the terrace of a country restaurant eating venison and overlooking the mountains is a memory indelibly etched into my consciousness. The Tyrol or Tirol is a region of the eastern Alps in western Austria and northern Italy. Inhabited in ancient times by Celtic peoples, the Tyrol constantly passed back and forth, in whole or in part, between Austria and Italy in the 1800s. Its present division dates from the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919. The hub of the Austrian Tyrol is the City of Innsbruck also included is the ski village of Kitzbuhel.
There is a small zoo in the mountains overlooking Innsbruck.
This should be on everyone’s bucket list.
