Day 8 - Ludwigsburg

 We spent the whole day today in Ludwigsburg - we had a tour of the Schloss Ludwigsburg (the palace) and then explored the gardens, including the fairy tale garden.

The palace was built in the early 1700's by Duke Eberhard Ludwig. We learned that the palace was built originally as a hunting lodge - just one building with around 60 rooms. However, it ended up becoming his main place of residence and in order to keep up with the other dukes around southern Germany, he needed to add on to it. It ended up with 18 buildings and over 450 rooms. Just on the Belle Etage - the floor where the royalty had their residence - there are 193 chandeliers made out of Bohemian crystal and the large chandelier in the ballroom weighs 650 pounds. The ballroom had an amazing acoustical effect - when you clap, there is an echo that sounds like a bird flapping its wings as it flies away - check out the video at the end of this post!

We were surprised to learn that the chapel can be rented out for weddings, as can the terrace and some of the rooms. The chapel and terrace can be rented for under 1000€, which also surprised us!

We explored the gardens in small groups and then walked back to the train station to head back to our host families. Of course, we stopped for ice cream on the way back and also for a photo op at the giant red pig outside the Sparkasse bank.