The Bayreuth New Palace

Today the girls and I visited our very first castle. and WOW, are we in love. 

The girls loved seeing what a royal princess of the time might live like. Mike had to work today so we decided we would venture out on our own. Off we went about 1 hour away to the lovely town of Bayreuth. Since this was our first driving adventure, and I was alone with the kids, we only went to the one castle and then home early.
Getting there in the car went very smooth. Very beautiful rolling hill country all the way. Even though today was a gloomy rainy day we got a very good idea of what the castle was like. When we got there an English tour was hours off so we decided to just do a self guided tour.....in this tour I was able to take photos unnoticed. This is the first part of the castle. ( I will add the history of this castle further down). The girls were most surprised by the fact that the castle was freezing. They learned that this is to preserve to oil paintings and such. Also because it never had heat to begin with. Once they got past the fact that places like this are also not kept brightly lite and there was nothing scary about that, we went on our way touring the whole level undisturbed.

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The Chandeliers where amazing

there were literally 1000 of oil paintings in this place. Many were your "what you would expect" type.  Then there were some of women stabbing themselves in the heart--and then this one? Alexa was pretty disturbed by this image.

We even were sure to take time to dance in the grand ballroom!

Outside was gloomy today, but still they got the idea of the beauty it held.

Since we got there so early, we were not going to wait all afternoon to take the guided tour. One of the staff noticed how much we loved it and offered to take us on a free tour of the second part of the castle. This was made for the second wife and was more "modern". My absolute favorite area by far. Because she was so kind to offer and went "off script" to tell the girls all about a women's typical day at a castle....I did not push trying to take any photos. Here are a few I found online.

I love the history of these places. I could go on and on about all the interesting facts, but if you want to look it up for yourself this website does a better job then I could.

http://www.bayreuth-wilhelmine.de/englisch/n_palace/index.html

Two facts the girls took from today. ONE: even boys wore the large dresses as young children. TWO: We got to see a bath. It was a large ceramic bowl in a separate room. Apparently they very rarely bathed in that time period. They believed that if one bathed too often that the water would seep into their skin and bloat/drowned them to death. Instead they had many fleas and lice all over them. Instead they just powered themselves over and over again without washing off the powder layers. 

"THE" Crystal from NACHTMANN

I have never been one to be a fan of crystal or any type of glass collection. Mostly because it was always seemed to be such a waste of money. We no more then got off the plane and heard people raving about a local Crystal Company that has been around for ages.
I was told they have this warehouse sale on Fridays and that I just "had" to go.
On a whim a friend mentioned that she was going last Friday morning, so with about a 35 minute notice we were in her car and headed to this so-called magic crystal land sale......little that I knew that in a few hours time I would suddenly be "hooked" .......

It is about a 45 minute drive into the town. Once we got there we went straight past the showroom and fancy stores that sell it all full price. Now that I've seen the beauty, the next time we 'venture that way, I will be sure to peer inside the actual showroom. We walked all the way back to almost an ally looking location within the crystal factory and found ourselves in a warehouse full of crystal on pallets--and drop dead prices. Thank goodness they had carts our Id be in trouble. LOL

Here is the pretties I got on my very first trip.

I chose the red wine glasses and plate to put on display in my living room to tie in with my red couch. I got the flutes for our upcoming anniversary. The vase was just to cheap and amazing to pass up, I also got each girl a Cinderella crystal shoe. I even paid extra to have the engraver etch each of their names on them. I spent 70.50 euro on all of it, including the etching fee. WOW!!!!

On top of this crystal being locally famous, it has a very rich local history. For me, this is what the appeal is. I adore the way everyone seems to have these family business run for hundreds of years to enrich this great Baveria land.

Here is some of the history of Nactmanns

1834 The glassmaker Michael Nachtmann found the company F.X. Nachtmann

1900 Zacharias Frank takes over the company and moves the headquarters to Neustadt an der Waldnaab, where they are still located today.

1945 Nachtmann rebuilds the partially destroyed production facilities and begins again the production of lead crystal in Neustadt and Riedlhutte.

1983 Laying the foundation for the third, highly modern crystal plant in Weiden.

Next time I will be sure to take my own pictures of the location, but here is what the front building looks like