A Palace for my Princesses

I never got the chance to blog about our visit to Ludwigsburg Palace back in June before the baby was born.  So since nothing exciting has happened here lately,  I'll take the opportunity now. 

Isn't it beautiful?  It's just a 15 minute drive from our house!

I promise to take anybody who comes to visit us!!

But before I expand upon the beauties of Ludwigsburg, I have to mention the biggest headache we encounter when ever we leave the house.  

Parking.

The bane of my European existence.  

Sorry for the bluriness, but this is an example of a typical parking place in Europe:  underground, low ceiling, and extremely tight squeeze.  Oh, and it's NEVER free. What is with the big beams?  I have scratched many a rear view mirror on those bad boys.  And our car is tiny compared to American standards!

The Kia Rondo makes for a tight squeeze

I'm always sweating bullets when I have to park.

But once that challenge has been conquered, we can finally relax and go exploring.  We didn't actually tour the palace.  Nine months pregnant with a 5 and 3 year old, no thank you.

But we did visit the grounds which are HUGE and lovely.

They have a Fairy Tale Garden, so fun for the girls  

They LOVED the boat ride

They have life-size presentations of various fairy tales. After all, the Grimm Brothers were German!   Not sure what this one is, everything was in German :/

We didn't have to understand German to figure out this was the Hansel and Gretel house.  Can you see the witch in the window?  Slightly creepy.

Em, always playing it cool

I love European parks, so green, spacious, and well manicured

So I guess the baroque-styled palace and gardens were built in the 18th Century by Duke Ludwig as hunting lodge.  He patterned it after Versailles, which he had previously visited and greatly admired.

It has some 400 odd rooms.  

I don't get it either.

But there's no denying it's beautiful!