Kathleen Willcox
The average price of a hotel in Austria tends to be over $200 a night — even higher if you want a five-star experience.
But if you get a group of 20 together and everyone chips in, you'll each pay around $151 a night to stay in a castle for a week.
That's about what my family did last summer when our large group booked a stay in Castle Wasserburg, a 12th-century marvel in Austria.
As expected, our multigenerational family vacation in a European castle ended up being pretty wonderful.
Kathleen Willcox
To be clear, castles are not palaces.
Castles were traditionally built to defend people and places, whereas palaces were built as symbols of extreme wealth. Still, castles tend to be large and impressive, often with incredible grounds.
The castle we rented sleeps up to 20, with 10 bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The rental comes with a staff member who does basic cleanup and prepares a breakfast every morning for guests.
Redesigned in baroque style, Wasserburg's ground floor opens to a small entrance hall, a great hall with an open fireplace, a small salon, a sauna, and an elevator.
On the first floor there's a large, gilded salon we nicknamed "the WiFi room" because it had the best cellular reception.
There was also a library with a fireplace where the older generations liked to gather, and a secret back room adjacent to the library that my son discovered one afternoon.
Kathleen Willcox
Most memorably, the castle has an enormous dining room with a table that seats 24, a vast balcony overlooking the grounds, and a kitchen with an external dumb-waiter that lowers down to the grill area.
The dumbwaiter proved to be an invaluable tool so we could avoid running up and down narrow stairways with heaving platters of dishes. Even the youngest members of our clan had fun operating it.
Otherwise, we spent most of our time in the kitchen playing cards, creating nightly feasts, sampling too many local libations, and oversharing.
But our time enjoying the grounds was arguably the most memorable part of our trip.
The castle is situated on a large park with a moat, pond, private swimming pool, tennis court set in a rock garden, small forest, horse stables, and gravel-lined walking paths throughout.
Hiroshi Higuchi/Getty Images
Although we could've spent days around the grounds, the castle's prime location in St. Pölten meant we were within driving distance of some exciting spots.
One of our favorite excursions was to the Wachau wine region less than an hour from the castle. There, we explored vineyards producing full-bodied, fruit-forward but razor-sharp riesling and Grüner Veltliner.
Austria's capital city, Vienna, is also less than an hour away and worth visiting for at least a full day. We also visited Salzburg and Bratislava, both a few hours' drive from the castle.
Kathleen Willcox
We would've had fun no matter where we stayed, but our time in the castle still resonates with me.
The castle was the destination and it's one of my favorite spaces we've rented as a clan over the years.
Staying in such a fascinating place helped us embrace the history of the region we were visiting — its culture, traditions, food, and drinks.
Living, cooking, traveling, and laughing together, even just for a week, reminded all of us of our shared history and traditions and gave us hope and energy to face a future united despite everything that may distract and divide us.
