Life After Work: Hanging With The Princess

Today we woke up to 3 degrees! What! We thought we were back home. All the warm weather people were not overly impressed either. I think it might have gotten up to 11 or so later but it wasn't a nice day except for a few minutes at the palace.

We had docked overnight at the small town of Miltenberg and departed on a walking tour just after 9:00. We wore the jackets that we almost didn't bring. Miltenberg was not damaged much during the war so we saw more of the original architecture. Some of the buildings date back to the 1600s.

The town was built near red sandstone cliffs so a lot of the original construction used that type of stone.

The town has a number of pubs and a brewery. We saw this tanker but no samples were available.

Throughout the town we saw numerous examples of buildings from the early years of Miltenberg.

This is the old synagogue.

Here you can see how some of the old oak beams have warped over the centuries.

It was quite a game to try to get photos that weren't swarming with other tourists! Sometimes I went back after a group had passed and other times I went ahead or veered off from the route.

This is a pub and the interesting thing is the sign. We all thought the symbol was the Star of David. But no! It was a symbol representing brewers. Each point of the star represented one of the elements needed to make beer.

Our final stop was a schnapps store. We just went in for a look when I noticed our guide tossing back a shot. Intrigued, I asked him what was up and he told me that they gave out free samples! Needless to say, we were in even though it was just after 10:00. It seems ok to do this in Europe so we did as the locals do. We also ended up buying a few sample bottles.

The next part of the day involved piling on buses to go to Schloss Kleinheubach. This is a palace where an official princess lives. They also have a small winery that produces fairly high end wines. We were supposed to do a wine tasting and see the place chapel. When we arrived the sun came out fully for the first time in a week. The wine tasting was done in a large room with tables which was a surprise. We sampled 3 different wines and they were very generous with the pouring. It was still well before lunch time too. Luckily, they gave us some nice rye bread to clear our palates and probably soak up some of the alcohol.

Our guide was a nice guy named Thomas who worked for the princess and did a number of jobs at the winery.

Now we were all happy and chatty and we were told there would be a change of plans. Apparently the chapel was being used for a golden wedding celebration and we couldn't go in. However, the princess had decided to give us an exclusive tour of the family's private residence instead! This wasn't something that had happened before. Our regular guides said that they had never been into the private residence either.

Here is the palace.

And this would be the Princess of Löwenstein meeting us at the front door.

I have to say that the Princess was not what I expected from royalty. She was completely down to earth, gracious and friendly. She also had a great sense of humour and told stories like a pro. Her first comment after telling us that we'd be coming into her private residence was that she hoped the place was clean and, no, we couldn't see the kitchen. She had everyone laughing with her stories about royal life, especially the one about her friends the King and Queen of Sweden!

Going through the place was like being in an old movie or reading a story set back in time.