After a short rest at our hotel, and refilling our water bottles, it was time to go see the ruins of Ehrenberg Castle. This is the more impressive (and closer) of the two ruins we can see from our balcony. (We have a beautiful view, and they light them up at night, but none of the pictures I've taken do it justice.)

As we hiked up the hill, we enjoyed being the only ones there, and being in the woods . Starting tomorrow it will be mostly cities and crowds, so we were enjoying it while we could. We weren't really enjoying climbing another hill, however. Our legs were getting pretty tired at this point, to tell the truth. We decided a more apt name for Castle Day might have been Busses and Hills day. ;)

But in no time we were arriving at Ehrenberger Klause, the entrance to the ruins. We looked around a bit, then started up yet another hill to the site of Ehrenberg. We passed an Austrian family on our way up the trail who confirmed that, "it is hot work" getting up to the ruins. But the ruins were worth it. I took a ton of pictures once we got up there, and we spent some time enjoying the breeze and looking down at the cities.

When we had photographed every angle we could think of, we talked over whether or not we wanted to keep hiking another 45 minutes up to Schlosskopf. It turned out we did not. Which was a good thing, because it allowed us time for a delicious dinner (consisting of five different meats and fries) down at the restaurant before running back down the hill to the hotel to avoid the evening's thunderstorm . We outran the bulk of the storm, laughing all the way at the huge thundering and the very real threat of being soaked at any moment. We kept joking what the lady who checked us in said, "most people have a car."

And that was castle day. We saw a lot, ate a lot, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Another win for Team Schmidt. :) Thanks for reading and commenting!  

The castles we saw in Füssen could probably be better described as castle-shaped palaces. 
The ruins at Ehrenberg were old military forts in place to control an important pass through the Alps (pretty much on the other end of the castle spectrum). The Ehrenberg ruins are not nearly as well known as the German castles and we really felt like we had the place to ourselves. It was quite the contrast.