Chateau du Haut Koenigsbourg et aigles

Today we decided to do a side trip to Chateau du Haut Koenigsbourg.  

First though a hotel breakfast - our first of the trip and we were excited.  It was good - unfortunately no pain au raisin which is Matt's go to breakfast in France, but there were croissants and pain au chocolats.  Also yoghurt, fruit, muesli, baguettes and lots of cured meat and smelly cheese.  We were all happy and stuffed when we came out. 

We staggered over to the railway station and got the local train to  Sélestat and then a shuttle bus up to the castle which was on top of a mountain.  On the way up we came across 3 other attractions - 'Flight of the Eagles', 'Monkey Mountain' and 'Cigoland' - a theme park based around storks for little ones.

Wow, just wow, the castle was straight out of Disney - it was hugging the top ridge of the mountain and had towers all over the place, we went in under a portcullis and were just amazed by the place - it has obviously been restored recently and was looking very handsome.  All the rooves were immaculately tiled there were spires all over the place.  We got to go inside, where once again the rooms were immaculate.  

The castle was originally built by the Germans in the 12th century.  It was made a ruin in the 1400s by locals torching it to remove undesirables, rebuilt and burned down again by the Swedes during the 30 years war in 1633.   Kaiser Wilhelm II started to restored it in the early 1900s, but it was handed over to the French in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles.  However, they have kept it as found.

We enjoyed a couple of hours exploring it, it looked like it had been built just recently - it certainly was immaculate.  We didn't get to see it all, but we saw enough and with it only costing €6 to enter (we discovered we got a €6 reduction for getting the bus up!) it really was very good value. 

One thing we had never seen before, Kachelofen stoves - huge tiled constructions in each room which would be filled with fire and heat the room (it gets very cold here in the winter).  We saw lots of Imperial Eagles in the decorations.  But mainly it was the building itself which was so impressive - it even included a windmill!

Once we were done we had an ice cream to cool down (hot, hot, hot again) and then decided to try out Flight of the Eagles on the way down (our bus ticket was a day rover ticket).  This was a birds of prey attraction in a ruined castle (oh - interesting statistic - there are over 500 castles in Alsace!) we got more discount for using the bus - so much so that the bus ticket was less than free!  They had a fabulous range of birds of prey including:

+ Bataleur Eagles

+ White tailed Eagles

+ Stellar's Sea Eagles

+ Bald Eagle

+ Lots of vultures

+ Eagle owl

+ Great Grey Owl

+ Secretary bird

+ Perigrines

+ Black Kites

and lots more.

We went round the cages saying hello, saw that there was an animation, so went in to view it - it was a lecture by one of the keepers who was going into immaculate detail on the birds, their feathers etc etc.  Too detailed and too fast for us, so we left and got ourselves a good place for the show in the shade. 

The show was AMAZING, they got most of the birds out and they flew into the audience- literally a cm above our heads, I had a moment when I was staring the Eagle Owl directly in the eyes.  We all got swooped by various birds, which was thrilling.  Not seen a show like it, not sure it would be 'allowed' in the UK, shame!  We saw peregrines diving, kites catching bait in mid air, le Harry Potter owl swooping, a secretary bird taken for a walk, it was 45 mins of amazement.  We were very very happy customers.  If we were able we would have stayed for more shows, but time was marching on.

We got the bus and train back to the hotel, had showers etc, then headed out for tea at 7pm (we are getting better at being European!) found ourselves a restaurant on the other side of the rail tracks which was way cheaper.  Was a Turkish establishment - we decided on a bottle of rosé...it was Turkish rosé, our first wine in France wasn't French - arghhhhh!  Anyway we had a good dinner - Matt had Merguez sausages - he was served a plate with 8 - he was very very happy!  Huge pizza for Tom (he couldn't finish it) and chicken wings and frites for me. 

We then wandered back into the veux ville of Colmar - for another look around, we found much more to it, we thought it might empty out of tourists at night - oh no, it was buzzing.  We found some glaces and stayed until after 10pm, enjoying the vibe.  

Took our aching feet back to the hotel, watched France score 2 goals agains Morocco in the World Cup and went to bed.