Best castle for 7 and 9 year old boys
 

Taking family to Europe. Looking for castle with moat drawbridge dungeon, etc. boys stuff. The mrs will appreciate one suggestion for a Cinderella castle as well, but looking for the manly castles

Castelnaud in the Dordogne - museum of medieval warfare, including how to sack a castle. Brilliant. But you need at least a week in the area. Where are you headed?

The Rhine and upper Mosel have a gaggle of them. If you are traveling on the cheap you can get a family room at the Bacharach youth hostel.

Haven't booked anything yet. We know the boys will have little interest in looking at paintings in stuffy museums. They want the real medieval as seen in the movies castle. We plan to build the rest of the trip around that perfect castle. Looking at 14 days, gives us plenty of time to hop train for the rest of the trip

Castello Estense in Ferrara, Italy might fill the bill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castello_Estense

From Ferrara, it is easy to include seeing Venice and doing a gondola ride, and you could visit the Roman Arena in Verona

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Arena

plus Verona has another iconic castle with moat, turrets and lovely bridge

http://www.meravigliaitaliana.it/ind...meraviglia=869

If you have a car in the area of Verona, you can also visit castle towns with piazzas that having "living chess" games (Marostica)

http://www.marcadoc.it/vedere/Partit...-Marostica.htm

and take a trip to Gardaland, the Italian amusement park on the shores of Lago di Garda.

Conway Castle in North Wales is one of my favorites.

Lots of good choices here. Dordogne is great for kids: castles, especially Castelnaud, caves with prehistoric drawings, fortified towns, canoeing on the river. It is deep country and easy to drive in.

Hi gstiefel,

Well, the drawbridge today is now a concrete walkway to get into the castle, but Chillon has a dungeon, an interesting history, and of course Byron's lasting words on the Prisoner of Chillon.

www.chillon.ch

Sits just outside of Montreux on Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

s

Conwy, Caernarfon, Beaumaris, Bodium, all classic castles.

Or Warwick of course.

Any specific castles meeting the requirements in the Rhine and Mosel regions?
Awesome suggestions. Gives us a great starting point. Thanks to all.

www.castlewales.com/edward To add to hetismij2 sugestions. Any number of castles in northern Wales.

Best part is that they are all easily reached from a central destination, being Betws y coed.

Then on too Warwick with dungeon and Knight on horseback.

Burg Rheinfels above St. Goar on the Rhine is a great castle for kids. Lots of dark passageways to explore - bring a flashlight.

This may be too far afield from where you are going, but one of the best castles I have explored was Cesis castle in Latvia. You go up in one of the towers with candle lanterns - very dark and atmospheric!

Hey G,

> The mrs will appreciate one suggestion for a Cinderella castle

The Cinderella palace is www.neuschwanstein.de/englisch/palace/

((I))

There's a dramatic, ruined hilltop castle in Bernkastel-Kues, in the Mosel area. No moat though. It's about thirty miles from Trier, which has many Roman ruins, if their interest extends that way. At least one girly-castle nearby, too.

http://en.bernkastel.de/holiday-regi...cloisters.html

One little trick that we used to keep our boys interested in exploring castles, at that age, was to tell them about the "buried treasure". SW would distract them, while I went on a bit and hid coins in pretty obvious places. The guys would have great fun seeing who could find the most coins. They weren't fooled for a moment, but our modified Easter egg hunt made for some fun times for all. It was a bonus when the coins were hidden near things I wanted them to remember, as we would then talk about who might have hidden things at what point in history, and why.

"SW" should have been "DW".

I don't think there is a perfect castle. Look at the suggestions on the internet and see which fit your wants.

If it's your first trip overseas, I think the UK might be easier to communicate in. But are you willing to drive? Easier to get to castles if you are driving.

Favorite (so far) castles in the UK: Dover and the Tower of London. Massive impressive and historic. Warwick is fun and lovely. Bodiam is small but picture perfect and fun for boys. I get to see Edinburgh and Windsor for first time in 3 weeks and expect them to end up on favorite lists. Castles in Wales are great--some ruins, some not--we enjoyed Conwy. Now, even with a car you couldn't get to these in less than 2 weeks probably; when looking at the UK if thinking of driving, whatever googlemaps or something tells you about times between places--DOUBLE IT! (We averaged about 1.5 times whatever the internet said, but sometimes it took over twice as long. Busy roads.)

Germany favorites--Berg Eltz on the Mosel and Marksburg, Rheinstein and Rheinfels on the Rhine. You could spend 2 weeks on castles just on these two rivers as they are plenteous!

Lots of castles in Scotland. My favorite is Threave Castle - walk thru a farmers field to a river, ring the bell and a boatman comes to take you to the ruined castle on the island.

Our 9-year-old son was bored essless by castles. But we are, too, so maybe it's genetic.