Pumpkin Festival at Ludwigsburg Palace

Pumpkins are cool.  And pumpkin festivals that use the pumpkins to make art are just a little bit more awesome.  What can make a pumpkin festival even MORE awesome?  Having it at a palace!!!

The girls and I went to the Kurbisfest in Ludwigsburg last Saturday.  It was so cool that we HAD to bring Jon back with us on his next day off. (He’s working weekends in October.)  They chose the theme of ‘Sports’ for the exhibition and all the displays were created using pumpkins or gourds.  The artwork created was fascinating and the Palace grounds were amazing!  The amount of time, effort, and money that has to go into its care has to be astronomical.  But it definitely pays off!  During the two visits, we took approximately 500 photos between the both of us!  Here are some highlights!

The walk down to the displays was pretty in and of itself.  It meandered along the side of the palace and started with the first real pumpkin display being a ‘Lighting of the Torch’ like they do in the Olympics 🙂

Madelyn REALLY likes horses right now. Approximately 5 seconds after this picture was taken, Madelyn fell off the hay bale 🙂  That’s my kid!

If you look closely at this picture, you will see that the face has some teeth flying out!   There is one stuck on a toothpick right outside his mouth 🙂

There was a building in the center that had all the different types of pumpkins and gourds that were grown with their names labeled.  This is one wall of three!!  I didn’t realize there were so many different varieties!

Olivia and I hung out for a little bit while Madelyn played on the playground.  She loves the camera!

We had spaghetti with julienned pieces of pumpkin in it for lunch.  It was pretty good! After lunch, Madelyn got a little silly.  Imagine that 😉

After looking at all the pumpkins, we made it to the Fairy Tale Garden.  It was VERY cool!  Madelyn sat in a flower chair in the center of a small pond with lily pads that opened after the chair raised up.  We rode the canal on a boat, looked in some of the fairy tale storybook houses, fed the goats, played in a hedge maze, and even rode a dragon!  The place was pretty amazing 🙂  Each fairy tale had a ‘house’ that told the story or a very small building with the display.  You would ring the door bell or move something on the outside of the building and the story would be told on the inside.  They were a little scary to watch, and listening to it in German didn’t help!  We didn’t recognize most of the stories, so after the first few houses, we just walked on by.

I’m not sure what story this was from, but it was some sort of ‘magical’ fountain.  There was something in German written on the doorway that Madelyn and Jon walked through.  If you didn’t move fast enough, you would get sprayed as you stepped across. Madelyn LOVED it and somehow didn’t end up in the water! She’s not really my kid 😉  Jon and Madelyn also climbed to Rapunzel’s tower.

In the center of the hedge maze were two frogs facing each other with a 4 step bridge.  On the last step (or first if you were unlucky) The two frogs would spit water at your feet.

After the fairy tale garden, we walked to another garden with a small pond.  We found this cool bird.  I think it is a blue heron?  I could so be wrong 🙂  We have them near our house.  They are scary because they don’t really fly well.  And they are large.  I almost hit one driving one time.  I try to admire them from afar 😉

Jon and I were both drawn to this tree.  It was beautiful!  It was also one of the first trees you would pass headed back to the palace down a tree-lined walk.  I really liked this older couple and their friend that was walking down the path.  The two older ladies were walking arm in arm towards the gate.

There was an ‘Orangerie’ that had a beautiful fall display inside.  Madelyn wanted her picture taken…. for a little bit.

Before we left, we finally made it to the front gardens.  This is the ‘official’ view of the palace.  You can schedule a tour of the inside, but because of size of the palace, it takes almost two hours.  We could never tour it with the girls.  We have a hard time with the 45 minute ones 🙂  Maybe one day!

We found these little ‘flowers’ that we thought were a pepper of some sort until we saw one that was deteriorated and we realized the were hollow on the inside!  They were neat to look at.

This was definitely an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon!  Will be putting this on the ‘To Do” list for next year!