"Tour" of the Castle and a Foray Into Venray

Lovely, lovely morning today. I got up at the crack of dawn (8:20am) and waited around until the light was juuuuuust right (about 9:10) for taking pictures. Now that I have my results, I will share them with you! Consider this your tour of Kasteel Well: 

A view over the bridge - everyone bikes!

One corner of the moat

My darling horses having their breakfast

This is the walking path that leads to another path between the moat and the river

Even the ivy turns color for fall

The ruins

My windows are the top two on the left. This is the back of the main castle, with a bridge over the moat that takes you to the bank of the river.

View from Pat's window; the first courtyard

View from the first courtyard

That is my home! Every night I sit in my window or I walk around and watch the swans and I think about how fortunate I am to live here. My mom would love it - it's like living in one of the Great Houses from her book! Anyway, I'm sure there will be more pictures of the castle itself, since I am often inspired to photograph everything around here. The beauty is just amazing.

Today Pat and I had an adventure into a nearby town called Venray. He needed to buy tights and shoes for his ballet class, and I just wanted to see what kind of towns are around Well. Turns out, most Dutch villages around here look the same! Same brown homes, same kind of architecture, same bike lanes and pubs and gardens. We got off the bus and tried to follow the map that Johnny gave us, but of course we got lost. The people that we flagged down were unfailingly nice; they all spoke English and they all tried to help us as best as possible. We finally made it to Thetru, the store we had been looking for.

It was a novelty shop that sold clothes for all sorts of things, including some sports. Best of all, they had crazy costumes!!

The tights-finding mission was successful, and we came back to Well and bought some amazing chocolate to end our wonderful day. 

Now I am off to start in on my Essential Homer, which I am excited to read! My literature class looks like it will be really good, and I love my art history professor. More on classes later though. For now, I have to read and then we have our first travel meeting since Amsterdam is this weekend! First guided trip...everyone's getting excited.