You can walk around the courtyard, the garden and the two chapels, etc with a simple admission ticket(5 euros). The inside of the castle is only accessible by guided tour and it costs 9 euros.

Here is the courtyard.

The castle has great views overlooking the countryside. It is very amusing to imagine that there was a real royal family here once. To my surprise, descendants of the royal dynasty are still living the building!

The history of the Hohenzollern castle dates back to 11th century and it was home to the Hohenzollern family that came to power during the Middle Ages. Later, it was destroyed and the current castle was constructed by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV between 1846 and 1867.

The castle can easily be seen at the top of Mt. ohenzollern from a great distance. It looked like a fairy tale castle and it looked really impressive. But it is difficult to capture the real beauty of the castle on film. The picture on the right is an aerial view of Hohenzollern Castle from a post card. If you want to get a wonderful picture of the castle like this, I think that you have no choice but to use a helicopter!

Hohenzollern Castle is little-known to Japanese tourists. As a matter of fact, many Japanese tourists already have rushed to the Neuschwanstein castle, which is the most popular castle in Germany, and most people haven't even heard about Hohenzollern Castle. It is too bad the tourists just pass nearby and miss the great castle. I think that the Hohenzollern castle is well worth a visit!

My friend saw a cat on the street and she ran up to the cat, once again! This time, she succeeded in patting the cat on the head. I've never really understood why she rushes toward cat on the street and she tries to pat it.She has two cats in Japan!!

Soccer-ball-shaped breads were sold at a bakery, during this period, the 2010 World Cup. What a great idea!?

We ate dinner at our hotel's restaurant which had an elegant atmosphere. It appeared that it was very popular with local people and the restaurant packed in dinner crowds. Most of all, the serving portion was right for my stomach and I could finish everything on my plate!

"Alpirsbacher Klosterbraeu".
It is a local beer from a region between France and southwestern Germany. "Kloster" mean "cloister" and it's label design has a monk on it.

After having dinner, we went to the pub which we had visited the previous day. Soccer was shown on the TV that day but Germany wasn't playing so everybody was relaxed and enjoying chatting, while drinking beer. It was difficult to believe that the pub had been hot with excitement the day before yesterday!