Schloss Kyburg

Well, today couldn't have been nicer.  The kiddies let us sleep in until 9:00 this morning, and I rewarded them with a big pile of homemade waffles for breakfast.  Today it was Ella's turn to pick our destination, and so, tummies full, we set out on our adventure to Schloss Kyburg, giddy that we were able to so something other than furniture shopping this Saturday.

Kyburg castle is at least 900 years old, and was inhabited up until almost 1800. The town of Kyburg was an hour away on two trains and a bus, with enough in the middle of that trip for us to grab a picnic lunch of sandwiches at the Hauptbahnhof.  (I think I could become quite fat on tomato and schnitzel sandwiches if I'm not careful.)  The bus dropped us only about a hundred meters from the entrance of the castle, although Ella got wiggly-excited a couple of kilometers away when she finally lifted her eyes from her book and first spotted the towers of the castle, up on the hill.  We walked past a small farm with scampering lambs, to Joey's delight: "Look! Animals! YayyayYAY!" and so we stopped as long as anxious Ella would allow us. Seriously, people...they're just lambs.  And there's a CASTLE!

In the winter, the castle is only open on the weekends, and even with the cut back hours it was almost deserted.  Just a few kind women in the ticket counter and us.  And the castle was extremely family-friendly, with lots of please-touch exhibits and interesting placards, translated into English.  Everything excited the kids: the real, working well in the courtyard (15 meters deep, and thick with moss and ferns around the interior); the grand hall with piped in music that Ella and Alex pranced to; swords and suits in the armory; the super-steep stairways that the kids crawled up on their hands and knees (Ella: "How on earth did princesses DO this in their dresses?!"  

Waiting for the grown-ups to catch up.

And those weren't even the best parts for the kids: they had dress-up clothes, secret windows tucked here and there with bats and dragons hiding inside, blocks to build with, a parlor with picture books...I'm afraid even Neuschwanstein will be a disappointment after this children's paradise.  

Approaching Schloss Kyburg

Where there be dragons!

And blocks!

And tunics for dress-up

And feats of incredible strength

And a bit of danger

And, inexplicably, a quiet corner where they were selling pieces of IKEA furniture.
Dammit, IKEA, leave us in peace!

We got the kids a little cardboard castle for them to construct and color as a souvenir and then went into the garden for our little picnic. Someone with an odd sense of humor placed the castle beehive (they make and sell their own honey there) right next to the picnic grounds, but in the cold weather, the bees were quiet.  The kids, not so much.

I give you Sir Joseph

While Dennis and I ate, they amused themselves with finding faintly colored pebbles in amongst all the gray stone of the picnic ground.  They were having so much fun that we decided to skip our bus and wait the hour until the next one so that they could keep playing and searching.  There was a pretty trail into the woods, we reasoned, that we could walk on when they got bored of their rock collecting.

We underestimated our children's OCDs.  All three searched the whole hour, and would have stayed longer, I think.

But Dennis and I were cold, so we bundled the kids back on the nearly empty bus, where they dispersed with their coloring and comic books for the ride back to the train station.  On the train Ella realized that she'd left her little treasure trove of pebbles on the bus.  Tears.  Oh, so many tears, all the way home.  Alex did his best to sooth her by offering his half of his own collection, but that just made her more weepy: "But then you won't have as ma-a-a-any! And won't you (sniff) be sa-a-a-a-d?" At which point Alex wisely realized Ella was beyond comforting and went back to his coloring book.  But time and dinner mended all, and now, I'm happy to say, she's back to remembering only the fun parts of the day.

Ella and Alex are coloring more pictures for our bare walls, now, while Joey pushes around his cars.  It sounds like he's saying "I am a robot train! I am a robot! Move! Move! I am a robot."

I do believe we have a third dreamer on our hands.