Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Extreme European Adventure: Ludwigsburg & Stuttgart (June 18, 2014)

Wednesday, June 18, 2014
After a quick breakfast of museli, we set out for Ludwigsburg for the day. Our objective was simply to explore old town Ludwigsburg and enjoy the Ludwigsburg Palace (Residenzschloss) and gardens.

Ludwigsburg is a simple 15 minute train ride from Stuttgart, so Stuttgart really did make a great home base.

On our walk to the palace, we ran into the local town farmer's market. It was nice to take an absorbive look around. They had some gorgeous fresh strawberries for sale.


We made it to the Residenzschloss without too much fanfare and purchased admission into the gardens at 8 Euro per adult. We opted not to do the interior tour, although I hear it is amazing. They have an English tour at 1:30pm every day at the palace, but we were honestly too taken by the expansive gardens and gorgeous weather to spend an hour and a half inside. I really do hear it is worth it. I could see how you could easily spend a day exploring the gardens and another exploring the interior.

German postcard at ticketing booth - anyone know the translation?.

The Residenzschloss is Germany's largest Baroque castle, and the gardens and grounds are over 30 hectares in size. It is too hard to describe what might have been the most impressive garden grounds I've ever seen. Kris was beyond delighted - in his Kris way.









They have a fairytale garden as well with children's rides and animatronics/booths set up to retell some classic fairytales. I could tell by looking what some of the fairytales were (Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, and Pinocchio), but I largely was lost. Almost everyone knows and speaks English here, but little is written or translated.

Luckily you don't really need to translate the gorgeous smells of florals. No fake or mutated plants here...just nature at it's finest cultivation.
Skilter!





We managed to find time to take a nap under a sprawling shade tree. (Well, I took a nap...Kris didn't like the bugs so he wandered more - and took photos of me napping.)

There were some cute animals too (mostly birds).
This guy is the Joey Tribbiani of birds.

Flamingo fight


 Bird bath
Did I mention this place was massive?



After leaving the gardens, we went into town to see if the market was still on. It wasn't, but we did stop for a piece of yummy kuchen (cake) before heading back to Stuttgart to go to the Killesbergturm Tower.
Snake sculpture - Ludwigsburg


The Killesbergturm Tower is in the midst of a large urban park and located at the highest point of the park. It was imposing and neat and afforded excellent views of Stuttgart.




Tired from the many hours of pounding the pavement, we headed back to the AirBnB. Kris made us another yummy dinner, and I edited some photos before calling it a night.


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1 comment:

B said...

Today I wish your post had a scratch n sniff. Those flowers looked like they smelled amazing!!!!!