A few weeks into the school year, Marshall convinced me to take a day off work and go to a place close by, called Idar-Oberstein. There is a church built into the side of a mountain there, and we heard the town was cute. Totally worth playing "hooky".
When you look at the church it really seems like most of it is inside the mountain! The legend is that the castle above the town had two brothers. They fell in love with the same woman, without knowing it. When one of the brothers discovered his brother also loved the same woman, he threw him off the cliff. The woman apparently never forgave him. He felt regret and asked the local abbot how he could get forgiven for his crime. The abbot told him to build this church in the rock- that was in 1482.
You walk through the town to get to the path up the hill. We ate lunch in one of these little huts.
The church is called the Felsenkirche.
We collect these squished pennies, and normally the kids argue over who gets to turn the lever. Marshall was happy to have it all to himself!
The path has a lot of stairs, and is not for the out-of-shape, or those with bad knees.
This is the entrance to the church.
Where you climb more stairs!
It's a small church, but beautiful, and has great acoustics!
Beautiful paintings, and carvings.
This is the altar.
There are huge windows to let in natural light.
You can climb through the mountain up to the top of the church, where the bells are.
After the church we followed a path through the woods to see the castle ruins.
This appears to be a memorial for something, from the Franco-Prussian War.
This stone bridge was beautiful.
They are currently working on rebuilding some of the castle.
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