The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 5

Our 5th day on the FTR turned out to be more stops than planned. Our first stop was Sababurg, the castle of Sleeping Beauty. The town this was outside of was so small, and old that it still had the original town walls. The castle itself was up a small hill and the steps seemed to be original as well. The castle was true to form, as it was completely covered by vines as in the story. A lady met us at the gate entrance in full dress and provided us with an English story/brochure on the castle after we paid our 2 euro entry fee. The brochure she gave us told us the Sleeping beauty story on a guided walking tour of the castle. Julie read the story to me as we went from each metallic guide post along the route. The castle has been partly restored, some of it is used as a hotel and restaurant and the main hall is an open theatre where they still have plays. It is truly a place Julie and I would visit again, the next time in summer, we would take in a play and spend the night in one of the rooms. Kassel is a very large city on the FTR and was our second stop for the day. If we had a free place to stay we could have spent at least 2 or 3 days visiting. However, we are on a tight schedule and only visited the Brothers Grim Museum. The top two floors were dedicated to the Brothers Grim, but was only in German as were the first two floors but these were dedicated to all Fairy Tales. For the most part it was a waste of time and money but we did use their bathrooms so it wasn’t all lost. We left Kassel right after that, as we only put enough money into the parking machine for 1 hr. We did once again argue about where to park the van, as most places seemed to be reserved. The next stop had a castle that we both wanted to see but never did as we couldn’t find the tourist office to get directions to the castle. We left Gudensberg for our free stellplatz in Homberg/Efze feeling pretty drained from the long drive and many stops.