Schloss Burg on the Wupper

A beautiful sunny day so we headed to Wuppertal to explore another castle.  About 45 minutes from home is the Wupper River where there is an ancient castle sitting atop a hill.

View from the castle.  The tower in the distance probably wasn't there 800 years ago!

Exterior of the castle.  Statue of the original person living here and a fire truck!

The castle was built in 1133.  Yes, almost 880 years old!  As we were climbing some worn stone steps on the tour we were discussing with the boys all the people through the many, many years that would've walked along and caused them to wear down.  Pretty amazing! 
The castle needed to be fully renovated due to its age, but it is restored nicely and one of the oldest around.  We took a tour of the interior of the castle.  The boys enjoyed seeing the interior - this was our first interior castle tour.   

Looking back towards a part of the castle we toured after walking around the wall.

They also liked the collection of armor, weapons, and models of the castle and surrounding buildings.

This is the castle with the surrounding buildings which have now been turned into restaurants and gift shops.  The left section of the model is what we toured.

We walked around the top of the exterior castle walls.  The boys enjoyed pretending to shoot arrows out the narrow openings in the walls and then hiding behind the wide openings - like they had learned the knights did during battles.

                                                   Do they look like they're having fun???

There was a festival going on so the interior courtyard of the castle wall was filled with food tents and quite a few people.  We expected it to be a medieval festival, but never found that portion of the day!  It was a fun castle to see anyway.

Kaleb enjoying the day:)

On a side note, the ride in the van was quite enjoyable this time.  Alex and Carter spent the time reading their chapter books.  They were so excited with how much they read.  They were quite proud:)  It also helped that Liam and Kaleb fell asleep.  Made for an unusually quiet ride!