Day 43 (June 15) Castle Searching near Bamburg

We awoke to enjoy another nice breakfast and headed out to find a number of castles in the area that are on the castle route that we are using.  The first was the Altenburg castle which is perched on a hill above Bamburg.  If the weather hadn't deteriorated so severely yesterday, we could have visited this castle in the afternoon.  In any event, the castle was free and we roamed the grounds.  They even had a 'falcon cam' showing a live feed of a falcon nest with two chicks.  There was a set of towers, so we climbed them for an even better view.  We also discovered the tribute to the castle bear.  As we were getting ready to leave, we noticed a tourist bus that would take us around the city of Bamberg and back to the castle in 45 minutes for 8.50€ each.  So we took it to get a different perspective on the city.  The driver was an American expat who married a German lady and stayed in Germany.  He wouldn't narrate the tour in English, but he had a marvelous German voice.

We then visited 8 more castles on the route, but I'll not bore the reader with the details except for two.

In the middle of the ride, we rode down this really twisty road into a geologically beautiful area with the little village of Pottenstein with its little castle perched high on the rock cliffs above it.  The village was so quaint and we walked the length of it to savor the sights.  We even found a small diversion dam that once served a mill.  We noted that the International Volksmarching convention would be held here in early July.  If for not other commitments we might be persuaded to stay for that event.  We even enjoyed a pizza and salad dinner at an Italian restaurant and ate the meal under an umbrella watching the traffic go by. And of course, the road out was also twisty.

The second castle was the  Castle Seehof in Memmelsdorf which is just outside Bamberg.  It was built by the prince-bishops of Bamberg and used as their retreat and hunting lodge and a way to get away from their subjects in Bamberg.  It's now owned by the government (previous owners were unable to maintain it) and the castle and grounds are simply elegant and it is open daily to the public for guided tours.

All of the above castles are located in an area called Franconian Switzerland for its resemblance to Switzerland.  Although we were gone the entire day, we traveled less than 100 miles!  And the weather pretty much held out for us all day.  If you want to read much more about these and other castles on the tour we are doing, go to http://www.castleroad.de.