Schloss Schwetzingen

After a relaxing (i.e. long) lunch, we moseyed our way to the Schwetzingen Castle and gardens. The exterior of the palace itself didn't seem to be too spectacular, in fact it was smaller than we expected . We later found out that the palace was initially constructed to serve as a hunting lodge, which would explain its size (or lack thereof). So we decided to forgo the schloss tour and just purchased tickets to walk around the palace gardens.

We walked through the entrance to find an enormous garden full of floral goodness. The garden was separated into carefully manicured sections, each containing rich colorful blooms, lush green plants and gorgeous water fountains. We had just started to walk around when we were caught in the middle of a deluge. The rain fell pretty heavily for about 10 minutes before it stopped completely. We've become accustomed to these mini storms that seem to just come and go in an instant. Here is a photo of some of the flower beds near the entrance, each bloom adding to the riot of colors.


Here is a close up of possibly the most perfect tulip I've ever seen in my life.

You have to hand it to the Germans - they really know how to design gardens well.

There was also a music hall where Mozart is said to have performed, but unfortunately we couldn't find it. However, we did see a random peacock wandering around one section of the garden. The little guy wouldn't turn around for me, but here is a picture of his tail feathers.

All of the fountains in the garden were really quite beautiful, though this one was particularly lovely.

As we continued on our walk we saw some well pruned mazes, more fountains, more flowers and more statues. At the end of our adventure, we came upon a tranquil lake where several families had stopped to rest. We were quite tired as well. Since it was starting to get late, we decided to walk back to town to take the next train back to Karlsruhe. Here are a few more of the photos that we took in the garden.