A Weekend in Nurnberg

For Labor Day weekend, we went to Nurnberg.  Since it was a long weekend, we actually stayed two nights in a hostel/hotel.   It was ‘technically’ a hostel that had some rooms that they would rent out privately.  It wasn’t anything fancy, but, hey, neither are we!  I mean, come on, we have two small children 😉

The old town has several different churches.  Unfortunately, I only got to go inside one of them.  As with all the other gorgeous churches we have seen so far, the architecture and details are astounding, not to mention their size!

We didn’t spend a lot of time at the churches this time because there were so many other interesting things to do!

We stopped for lunch and then headed up to the castle.  The castle was a hike from our room – probably the better part of a mile.  We didn’t mind the walk because the temperature was great and there was plenty to look at 🙂   We walked past this fountain that looked like a church spire on the left and Madelyn called it a ‘mini church’ 🙂

As we got closer to the castle, it was close to Olivia’s nap time, so she became my little snuggle bug.  Normally, she is very alert and looks around at what is nearby, but when its close to nap time, she kinda zones out before falling asleep 🙂     We crossed a bridge about half way to the castle and attempted a family picture.  I was pretty happy with the results! 🙂   Rarely can you get the three of us looking at the camera AND smiling!

Once we got the the castle, we were not disappointed!  The castle is set up in much the old style – outer wall, outer courtyard, and inner courtyard and a ‘keep’ where the family lived.  We got there close to closing time Saturday, so we didn’t actually do the ‘tour’ until Sunday.  Here are some of the photos from the castle both days.

 

One of the interesting things about this castle was that you were allowed to take pictures inside.  It was not set up like the ‘typical’ castle with period furnishings.  It was more of a museum that helped explain the significance of the area and how it developed and eventually separated from the Roman Empire.   This was the upper chapel that was only used for company.  There is apparently an almost identical chapel directly below this one that was used by those that lived in the castle.  The railing you see in the center of the picture allows a peek into the chapel below, but there wasn’t much that could be seen from that angle.  The chapel was located directly off the meeting hall.

The museum/castle did a fantastic job with the displays.  Many were in English as well as German.  I took a LOT of photos of the explanations because I might teach again some day 😉
 

There was an amazing weapons section almost all the different types of weapons used at different periods in history – swords, cannons, guns (as seen above), and all sorts of smaller, close combat weapons.  It was very interesting!

After the tour we did climb the tower and look out over the city.  It was pretty cool 🙂  The tower was on the outer gate, so this is looking back into the outer bailey (think heart of the castle where the common people lived) and the inner bailey is through the door/gate in the center of the picture.

Here are a few random Madelyn shots from the weekend.

And a few of Olivia.

We joked all weekend that these old school Fiats
were ‘Madelyn’s car’ so as we would pass a group of cars, Madelyn would say ‘Is this Madelyn’s car? Nooo.  Is this Madelyn’s car?  Nooo.”  Luckily, we saw two different ones, so it was fun for her, repetitive for us 😉

We called it an early night on Sunday and brought Chinese food back to the room and just relaxed.  It was nice to finally sit down since we had been walking all day.  It was the perfect way to end a great day! 🙂  There is still so much we didn’t see that we are planning to go back and visit again.