Princesses fascinate me. (No, really?) My first full-length story, way back when I was thirteen, involved a princess (who lived in a hidden, underground house in the middle of a huge forest because bad guys had taken over the throne). My first trilogy, back when I was sixteen, involved a princess (who thought she was a slave, because, why not?). And now, my current series, when I’m twenty-four, is all about twin princesses. (And y’all probably know all about that by now.)

Therefore, as you can imagine, exploring castles and palaces in Europe a couple years ago made my little princessy heart extremely happy. I still dream of going back and exploring the castles and palaces more, one day. It’s kinda a dream of mine to write book in Europe while sitting and walking among castle ruins.

This morning I sat down to blog and somehow got sidetracked reading something about Princess Kate from Great Britain (don’t ask me how that happened). So of course that made me think about castles and palaces and princesses. And, it made me so happy I decided to look up a couple of my Europe trip posts and share them with y’all again.

Here you can read all about the Newschwanstein Castle (pictured above) and our hours of standing in line and freezing. It really was a totally delightful, and extremely memorable, experience.

The Heidelberg Castle in Germany was one of my all-time favorite places to visit. Thinking about it nearly brings tears of joy even now because it was that amazing. I can barely even comprehend a more lovely setting to write a book in. There’s SO much room for the imagination to go totally wild, which is of course wonderful.

We also got to explore a fantastic amount of palaces that were stunningly beautiful, but generally had a “no photos allowed” rule. That didn’t mean I couldn’t take snapshots in my mind to sigh over in delight for the rest of my days. And of course those snapshots will most likely one day make their way into my princess-stories, so that’s even better than a picture.

By the way, if y’all have any suggestions for clean books that involve princesses, I would be utterly delighted to hear them.

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What about you? Do you find princesses as inspiring and intriguing as I do?