We stayed right next to the town Strassburg, which like all towns in Austria, had a castle – so we decided to check it out.
The castle was originally built in the 1100s, and added onto in the 1500s and 1600s. There was a major earthquake in 1767 that destroyed some of the castle, and it was all but abandoned after this. There were some efforts to restore the castle, but then there were fires caused by lightning in 1858 and 1904, and afterwards the villagers ransacked the valuable items from the castle that were still left. Hmmm… maybe the fates were combined against this particular castle…
The Kaernten government actually ordered the demolition of the castle because it was in such bad shape, but then a foundation was created to save the castle, and it was restored in 1955. It is neat because they restored most of it to a reconstruction of how it must have looked new, but there are still a couple areas where the original stonework is left, in a few different walls around the grounds. 
This is the inside courtyard, obviously all redone. There is a neat exhibit inside showing photos of the castle in its ruined form, and throughout the reconstruction period.
The castle is of course, situated on top of a hill with a great view of all the surrounding countryside. Ollie and Chris are enjoying the view!
While Elora admires the dandelions!
We only had the small stroller, and of course Elora determined she was way too tired to walk, so we tried to have the kids share for a little while… they thought it was hilarious at first… we had to put a stop to the stroller sharing after the hair pulling and pushing war ensued…
Me with some old rocks.
We are not sure what this is. The inside is filled with old artifacts and this was in the kitchen section. The signs were all in German, and my ancient artifact vocabulary is not very good. I thought it looked like a butter churn. What do you think?
Elora really enjoyed standing at the pulpit that was in an exhibit showing artifacts from different churches in the area. Ollie joined her later, but he was too short to see over the top.
Inside the old chapel. Elora was fascinated by this… and she glared at Oliver when he tried to touch it, so he moved on to check out the echo in the chapel.
Something from church must be sinking in, because Oliver started folding his arms while walking around. Still yelled to check the echo though.
Elora loved all the flower boxes and was thrilled to find some flowers on the ground, since she knows she shouldn’t pick “decoration flowers”.
The upper walkway was beautiful with all the arches and flowerboxes.
And the kids loved having long straight corridors to run down.
I stayed at the top to check out the view, while Chris took the kids down to the benches below to hang out and have a snack.
Beautiful countryside. I really loved Kaernten. Hopefully we can go back when the kids aren’t sick!!!
