That Time We Stayed in a Castle

 Thursday - March 17, 2022

We've been up since the wee hours of the night because jetlag.  Once the cafe/bakery opened up for breakfast downstairs, we trooped down and ate ALL the things.  It was a beautiful spread: freshly baked breads, spreads, cheeses, meats, hard boiled eggs, coffee/tea, juice and these tiny apples.  It wasn't a buffet - when we walked in, they let us seat ourselves and then they brought everything over for us.  

Cafe Garni Maas seems to be a neighborhood place with a lot of regulars.  Elderly regulars.  They come in, order breakfast, and they settle into their booth with the paper and sit for a few hours.  They chat with the people who work in the cafe, and it's a sweet community feeling in there.  When I was standing in line to purchase cake, there were lots of people who came in just to purchase a slice for themselves to take home.  I also saw some elderly women settle in with a slice of cake and a coffee in the afternoon with a book.  There's something very sweet about that to me.

We ate and ate and ate and there was carb overload.  But since I anticipated a lot of walking, I figured we could afford the carb coma.  The plan for the day was to drive up to Marksburg Castle, visit Castle Rheinfels in Sankt Goar, then head to Schoenburg Castle in Oberwesel where we were booked for 2 nights.  

Staying overnight in a castle was not an idea that occurred to me initially as I was booking and planning the trip.  We had decided to extend our trip both before and after the guided tour when I realized that Mainz, the city our tour with Gate 1 started in, was pretty close to the Rhine River.  And along the Rhine River, specifically the middle Rhine Valley - there are castles EVERYWHERE.  The plan had been to find a comfortable and clean place to stay in that had a central location, then drive to the different castles to visit them.  As I was researching different places to stay in, I noticed that a few different castles along the Rhine were now hotels that you could spend the night in.  Looking into it, it turned out to be much more expensive than the standard inns and B&B's along the Rhine (you're not going to find a Hyatt or Marriott of Hilton in any of the villages along the Rhine).  Being super cheap, I didn't want to blow that much money on the three nights we had before the tour, but decided there was no reason not to spend one night in a castle.  So the plan was to stay 2 nights at Hotel Garni Maas in Braubach and use that as a base for exploring the area, then spending one night in a castle hotel before we started our guided tour with Gate 1.  I booked one night in Reichenstein Castle, since it looked super cool, there was a museum on site, and it wasn't too expensive (about $300 for a night), but a few months later I received a cancellation notice from them indicating that their hotel portion needed to undergo renovations the week we were going to be there and asking if we could move our dates.  We couldn't, since we had airline tickets and a guided tour booked, so I unfortunately had to cancel.  But my determination to spend a night in a castle did not die, and I scoured the internets for another castle hotel that we could spend the night in.

That's when I found Schoenburg.  Whereas Reichenstein's hotel facilities are adjacent to the thousand year old castle, Schoenburg's rooms are inside the thousand year old castle itself.  Where Reichenstein's rooms are fresh and modern (it looks like a Westin inside), Schoenburg is unabashedly a medieval castle with antique furniture, stone walls, and canopied beds.  The reviews for Schoenburg were phenomenal, they had a half board rate that included dinner in a Michelin rated restaurant...it was kismet.  My cheapness flew out the window, and balling out of control, I revised our stay at Hotel Garni Maas from 2 nights to 1, and booked a two night stay at Schoenburg with half board instead.  Two nights in the Barbarossa Suite for 3 that included breakfast and dinner came at the princely sum of 850 Euros.  Not cheap.  At all.  But...not outrageous either.  As an aside, once I drove up the mountain to Schoenburg on its steep, narrow, often one-lane for both ways road with blind hairpin turns...I was SO GLAD I PURCHASED HALF BOARD.  Because I was NOT going to drive down the mountain to the village of Oberwesel to find food in the dark.  Nope.  I would've just cried.  Okay, I lie, I would've just paid the a la carte price for dinner and then cried about the money I could've saved if I just purchased half board that came with a prix fixe menu in the first place.  The prix fixe menu each night was available for 65 Euros per person.  For the three of us, that's almost 200 Euros a night!  I can't remember exactly how much it was to add half board onto the room, but I think it was about 100 Euros a night extra on top of the room for dinner each night for the three of us.  Winning!

Going back to Marksburg, after we repacked our backpacks and cleaned up the room we stayed in, we headed up the hill to the castle.  It looks very grand and intimidating from the village, and it looked intimidating when we were approaching it on foot; but it's actually smaller than I thought!  Not to say it's small, but it was more...approachable than I would have thought.  Marksburg is the only castle in Middle Rhine Valley that has stood intact and has never been damaged or destroyed, so it's a gem that must be seen.  While other castles (like Schoenburg) had been rebuilt after fires or battles or looting, Markburg never had to be.  They have tours that take you into the castle, but as we went in the off season, there were no English tours.  Instead, they handed us an English pamphlet that we had to try to follow along with while the tour guide was introducing all the awesome things in German.  I'm sure we missed a lot because that pamphlet was pretty skimpy, but I'm still glad we got to visit the castle.  Then kitchen was fascinating, the torture implements were scary, and the canopy bed was SO TINY.  SOOOO TINY.  Even more fascinating is the indoor toilet connected to the great hall that empties to the garden below.  Genius!  The tour was about 50 minutes - it took us inside and out and up and down some steep 800 year old stairways.  Even not understanding a word of what was said, I had a good time and found it well worth the visit.  

We were there so early in the season that there was no one there in the little booth by the parking area to take our money.  I had all the Euros counted out ready to pay - and I wandered around looking for someone to pay - but I guess they didn't want my 2 Euros yet 😀.  After parking, there's a lot of steps - A LOT OF STEPS - up to the entrance of the castle.  And inside the grounds, keeping in mind that this was built a thousand years ago - there are some steep and slippery inclines with no steps.  While we didn't encounter actual rain on this trip (even though we brought raincoats and umbrellas), we hit a bit of fog and sprinkles the day we visited Marksburg - so made it even more slippery than usual.  We were lucky that none of us fell, but we were also super careful.  Who knew castles could be so dangerous?

the view up from the parking area.  So. Many. Stairs

at the entrance

heading up towards the office to buy tickets for a tour

view of the Rhine with Braubach below

We went into the small gift shop where we purchased a guided tour for the princely sum of 11 Euros.  We waited by one of the gates to the castle with a view of the Rhine for the tour to start.  

Inside, heading towards the heart of Marksburg

the Great Hall looking towards the master bedroom

the Great Hall

the toilet!  This thing is amazing!  It's an outhouse that empties in the garden below!  It's connected to the great hall - so there's a hallway leading from the hall (about 10 feet or so?) that leads to the outhouse that's suspended over the rear garden.  Genius!

The master bedroom...you can't tell from this photo how small this is.  This is the original bed.  It's just slightly larger than a twin, and it's about my height.  I am vertically challenged at 5'2", so you can imagine how small this canopy bed is.

the entrance to the master bedroom from the great hall

the ceiling of the chapel.  All castles have their own chapel inside - this one has original artwork on the ceiling.

original gigantor winepress in the kitchen

the armory!  They had all kinds of different armors through the ages

After visiting Marksburg, I set out course towards Sankt Goar to visit Burg Rheinfels.  Burg Rheinfels was the largest fortification along the Rhine in the Middle Ages, and the French destroyed it in the 18th century to make a point.  A point that they sucked.  (then, not now.  I love you France!  I love your cheeses and macarons and sauces and art!)   Apparently the Rhine was a battleground for centuries between France and well, there was no united Germany then - but all the little principalities along the Rhine.  The French kept wanting to claim the Rhine and  make it the border between France and the German states and all the princes and archbishops and the kings were understandably resistant to this idea.  Burg Rheinfels was glorious - it was so large, and while it's in ruins, it ended up being one of our favorite places that we visited on the trip.

view from the parking lot

this huge cavernous space was a cellar!  Think of allllll the wine they drank 😵

I clambered down into the cellar to demonstrate just how large it was.  Those steps are STEEP!

We tromped through the ruins - it was SO. MUCH. FUN.  

and it carried some very cool views of the Rhine

even as I'm terrified of heights, I climbed up the narrow and scary steps to the rampart and battery of the castle.  The view from here was amazing!

if you look closely, you can see some super scary super steep steps you can take down towards the entrance.  We did not do that.  I looked at it from up top and went nah.  So we took the looong way around (which we didn't mind, because the place was awesome) and walked back towards the entrance negotiating the much gentler slope Burg Rheinfels was built around.

We probably spent around 2 hours at Rheinfels, and starting to get tired, we headed directly for Schoenburg Castle in Oberwesel, about 10 km away.  The entrance to the hotel is up a steeeeeeeep hill - I had read that once you checked in, they will go with a cart and grab your luggage for you.  So we trooped up that hill from the parking area (we opted not to cross the narrow bridge and instead, parked just outside it, which I think made for an easier departure) and checked in.  Then I gave the car key to the nice lady at reception who said they'll have someone not only grab our luggage from our car, but deliver it to our room for us.  Our room was in the oldest part of the castle up 2 steep flights of stairs.  Winning!  Tipping that delivery man was the best 10 Euros I spent on the trip.  We could have done it ourselves, but that would mean we'd spend our vacation sore and likely injured since we are weak assed indoorsy people.  

upon check in, each party receives a personalized map of the property.   You're gonna need it, because it's extensive!

I booked us into #31, the Barbarossa Suite.  Most of their suites cost about the same amount, but in the interest of having more space, I opted for a room without a balcony.  When you walk in, you see the bedroom with a king sized bed, a TV that pops up via a remote control, an armoire, and a little room to off the main bedroom with two very small beds.  VERY SMALL.  For small children small.  I could fit in one, but if I roll, I'd probably fall off.  Instead, this was where we shoved out suitcases and my parents could change in there.  The Barbarossa has a half flight of steps to the "living area", which was my bedroom.  There was another TV,  books in there (which made me happy, even if they were in German and I couldn't read them, the presence of them was comforting), a table, and a daybed.  

view from the entrance to the room - the canopied king bed.

up the stairs and to the left was the living room that I slept in.  This is why I booked the room, so I had my own space.

across the hall from me (up the stairs and to the right) was the bathroom with its clawfoot tub.  The other reason I booked this room over the Kapellan Suite was that I didn't have to walk through the master bedroom to use the bathroom - so no one would be disturbed if anyone needed to pee in the middle of the night.

we were welcomed with 3 small apples, juices and water in the fridge, and complementary sherry that only my mom drank.

After unpacking and lazing around, we went to the dining room for dinner.  There are MANY dining rooms.  You head down and ring a bell and they take you to where you will be dining that evening.  They told us that guests are rotated nightly, so every night you'd be in a different space in the castle.  The castle was beautifully renovated and the rooms were gorgeous.

The burghotel's restaurant is also Michelin rated - the portions weren't large (even my mom who has the appetite of a bird finished everything), but it was all well made and very tasty.

I loved this room and was a little sad we never got to eat in here during our 2 night stay

After dinner we went back to our room, all showered, and spent the night relaxing and watching TV.  I brought rokus, and the TV in the main bedroom was a smart tv, so I hooked it up to the wifi so my mom could watch her shows.  The castle stay was a bucket list item - also, a means of getting some R&R before our 7 day guided tour from Germany to Switzerland to Liechtenstein to Austria.