Stuttgart - The Rise of the Great Pumpkin

(September 17th) Ludwigsburg, specifically Schloss Ludwigsburg and the baroque gardens.  Sorry, no photos of the inside of the castle were allowed, but plenty of the exterior to share. 

Schloss Ludwigsburg.

Getting closer...and into the front gardens.

What was that?  Something caught the attention of this statue!  And for those of you that thought that was me in the photo after a few weeks of not shaving, sorry, but I'm light-house white, not stone grey, and I have far less belly fat...

Also, no English tours when we went (supposedly they do have them, just not while I was there).  Luckily, Pascal to the rescue!  He managed to translate whatever I couldn't catch.  Fairly interesting history...apparently, Baden-Württemberg was made into a dukedom after Napoleon came through.  The castle (schloss) in Ludwigsburg was then constructed and expanded into it's present day grandness.  Like many baroque castles in semi-remote, non-industrial areas (i.e. places not bombed during the world wars), it's fairly well preserved complete with period decor.  Some of the neat aspects were that they had two fairly elaborate chapels in which you could still book private engagements...Pascal told me that one of his friends got married in one of them last year.  Very fancy digs.  The rest was fairly standard things that you'd expect, but as it'd been a while since I'd done something touristy in Europe, it was a nice outing.

The inner courtyard of the Ludwigsburg Palace.

And the eagle has landed.

The majority of our time we spent going through the baroque gardens that surround the Ludwigsburg palace.  Mainly this was because we were killing time waiting for the tour to start, but also because they were having a pumpkin festival, the pictures of which will fill the rest of this post.  Enjoy!

First stop: the orangery, complete with UFP's (unidentified, floating pumpkins).  Why it's called the orangery, with no oranges growing, I don't know.

A few of the hundreds of varieties of pumpkins on display from across the world...something in this picture, though, doesn't quite belong...

Hey, wait a second...where'd the pumpkins go?  In the background is a carousel from the early 1800s...

Every good castle needs a dungeon.  Here's one in Ludwigsburg.

The theme of this year's pumpkin festival was Switzerland.  Instead of photographing the Swiss flag, yodeling farm hand, or whatever other Swiss things were there, I went with the larger than life size replicas of...a Swiss rodent? 

Foreground: Swiss sheep.  Background: pumpkin festival HQ, complete with stalls where you can buy any of the styles of pumpkins on display!

Have you ever wondered what the Matterhorn would look like if made out of pumpkins?  Well, now you no longer have to wonder!

Next up: Mercedes, my German love.