Driving through Darmstadt is easier than expected and soon we arrive at our accommodation for the last two nights in Germany, Jagdschloss Kranichstein. We have chosen it, besides other considerations, based on the fact that it is a historical sight and a four stars hotel with restaurant so it sounds like a great place to end our trip. It isn’t. Even though it is a four star hotel there is no AC and we are in the middle of a heat wave which makes staying in the room profoundly uncomfortable. As a bonus the restaurant is never open during our visit and the parking is far away from our room, luckily at least you can park in front of it to unload.
At least the historical sights are beautiful, the palace was built in 1578 as a hunting palace for the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt. It then became a museum of hunting and now it is a hotel but not a good one in our opinion.
You can walk and explore the grounds but this is not for guests only and can be explored by anyone.
This actually makes us apprehensive on getting outside the gates to the pond as who knows if they get closed when the sun goes down? And there isn’t a lot of time left till sunset.
But outside we go to explore the pond and see if there are any interesting birds. The pond is beautiful but the only flying things that we notice at first are the mosquitoes, they are quite bad around sunset and near a pond.
Then we see our first birds, a group of Mute Swans on the pond including a few cygnets, they glide quite beautifully and we enjoy watching them for a while just doing their thing.
We then continue exploring the woods but with no additional mammals or birds and the stress of the door being possibly closed we return back to the room to retire for the night.
Next morning before leaving towards Darmstadt we do one more tour of walking up to the pond to see if there is anything new. The views are great but no new birds are visible so we return and explore Darmstadt and then visit with friends before returning for another night in the oven like room.
On the last day we have an hour to burn before check out time and we explore the grounds a bit more extensively. This way we reach a few of the farther away buildings some of which are also part of the hotel and some of which are the Bioversum Kranichstein, a museum as far as we can tell.
This time we also get lucky with a few more birds on the way like nuthatches and geese, including an Egyptian Geese couple that does a whole dance fight in front of us, quite nice.
Even more impressive is the fact that we meet multiple turtles that seem to have refugiated next to the wall in the morning and then we see them cross the trail when we return as they make their way to the pond. And then it is time to bring the car to our hotel section to load the car and then return to reception to check out. Soon we are at the airport where we return the car and then have an uneventful flight back home.
