Braubuch, Marksburg Castle & Rudsheiam

Posted on 1/18/2012

After a few days bumming around Wiesbaden, Jospeh and I were ready to explore a little more of Germany (especially since we were over the jet lag! Yay!). On the recommendation of one of Josh's friends, we decided to go to Braubach and see the Marksburg castle. It's unique because it was never successfully "captured" so it's all pretty much authentic.  Braubach is easily accessible by train so Joseph and I headed out from Wiesbaden on the 9:33 train, and a hour and half hour later had arrived. (Also we only paid £26 for both of us, roundtrip, which is super cheap here so that was exciting.)
The town of Braubach is adorable, a stereotypical small german town... however the Marksburg castle sits well above the town itself, which is probably the reason the Marksburg castle was never taken over: getting there is pretty intense. Or at least it was for me, Joseph was fine... However the  hike was well worth it, and luckily the only other tourists were also English speaking so we were able to take a tour given in English- it was an hour long, £5, and very interesting.
The tourist center also gave us a map with other places to visit on a little walking tour, so after leaving the castle we were able to do that as well. Some of the places we couldn't find, but some of the places were pretty obvious: like the old town wall from the 1300,s- cant miss that! Or the mansion built for a kings widowed daughter in the 1560's... We finished off the walk with a stop at an adorable local bakery where we got a coffee and two pastries (both amazing!) for £4.
On the way back we stopped in Rudsheiam, which we had also heard was a cool place to visit. We only ended up staying a half hour because everything was closed-I think it is more of a tourist town so it is probably super busy in the summer but dead in the winter. Still I was yet another perfectly stereotypical German town. Seriously I kept joking "it's just like at the international village at Disney World!" ...but it's true they're just so perfect and picturesque.
The Swan Inn has been operating since 1692!
It was REALLY cold!
Marksburg Castle
View from the castle.


View from the castle of the Rhine River

I love tapestries for some reason and this castle had some great ones!



Cute little town of Braubuch

This was built for a widowed Princess in the 1600's, super gorgeous



Joseph with coffee and a delicious pastry!
Rudsheiam:

  1. Love it. I want to live in a castle. That is good that the train tickets were super cheap. Vienna next?

    ReplyDelete