Saturday, August 29, 2015

Burgruine Wolfstein & Bratwurst Röslein

For the foreseeable future, I think every weekend we'll be going to see a castle or castle ruins in Germany. Bavaria is castle central! I Google mapped out Burg/Burgruines (Castle ruins) and a lot of the castles and castle ruins in Bavaria popped up!  Today, we decided to check out Burgruine Wolfstein. I had heard about this castle ruin from one of the Wives pages, and after showing Drew pictures, he instantly wanted to go. He laughed at the name, it reminded him of something from his childhood? I don't really get the reference.

The castle ruin is about an hour away from us. Some friends of ours came with us, they have a dog who Rylie gets along with, it's always nice to explore with friends. 
Finding the castle was pretty easy. We decided to take the route through towns since it was only a   94 km drive, as opposed to going on the autobahn, which would be a 124 km drive. We plugged the address into our GPS, Wolfenstein 1, 92318 Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, and it brought us to the Castle ruins! Usually we have to hike a bit before we can see the actual ruins. This was a pleasant surprise.


There was free parking, and it was a short 5 minute walk to the ruins. 
The ruins of the hilltop castle is located in the central part of the Franconian Alb on the highest point of the Wolf Steinberg. Today, the ruins of Wolfenstein are in good condition. Since the mid-1990s, the association leads Wolfenstein visitors through extensive excavations and renovations in the main castle. Among other things, the ground floor has been exposed. The dense tree and vegetation in the ruins has been removed, so that the walls will get more light and will prevent damage due to moisture.


Sidles Family @ Burgruine Wolfstein



The castle is open all year round. However, due to excavation and renovation work, there may be restrictions on where visitors can go. During the summer months guided tours of Wolfenstein are offered on Sundays, During the tour, the 22 m high donjon (tower) can be entered, from which you can enjoy a panoramic view over Neumarkt and the surrounding area. Unfortunatley when we went the tower was locked! So we were unable to climb up and see the views from the top. I guess we should've saved the trip until Sunday.



The view from the Castle ruins!




Rylie was super happy to get out of the house!


 








 






We spent about 40 minutes there. It was a great day, Wolfstein castle ruins are perfect for a cooler day. It was about 85 degrees out, thankfully there were lots of shaded areas. This place is perfect for anyone with a man-child who likes to explore and climb on things (even though climbing on things is technically not allowed)

After leaving the castle we headed down to Nuremberg to a restaurant called  Bratwurst Röslein. The Bratwurst Röslein - largest Bratwurst restaurant in the world! It was pretty amazing! Our friends used to live in Nuremberg and kept telling us about this restaurant. Since we were so close we decided to head to the restaurant for an early dinner. This place did not disappoint!



  Everyone got the "hausmenu", which included Soup, Main course of Roasted pork knuckle with beer sauce, Nuremberger bratwurst with fresh sauerkraut, red cabbage, and a potato dumpling, and desert of apple fritters and ice cream. 

I got the Schweineschäufele, which was a roasted pork shoulder with a potato dumpling in beer sauce. TOTALLY AMAZING and the prices were very reasonable!


After stuffing our faces full with amazing German food we were ready to head home. It was a great day with good friends and we even got to include our fur babies! That's the best kind of day in my opinion!

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Burgruine Wolfstein:
Address: Wolfstein 1
92318 Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz
Cost: Free

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