Nuremberg

Today we made the 3 hour drive out of the Bavarian Alps to Nuremberg. No the car GPS said it was going to take 3.5 hours because it decide we needed to the scenic route through town. So we used Google maps which took that extra half hour off the drive by using a more direct route to the autobahn. After we started the Google Maps route the car GPS placed us on that route as well. This insistence by the GPS to take scenic routes through town when set to quickest time to get to destination may be why it seems to take us longer then stated by the travel book.  Anyway, onto our adventures in the city of Nuremberg.

View from castle garden

Me in the castle garden

I have been Nuremberg once before, but for about 3 hours as a lunch stop on a bus tour. During that stop we did not get to tour the castle or truly explore the city. This time I got to see the castle, which is up a hill and provides a lovely view of the city.  After we checked into the hotel then started on our way to Kaiserburg (the Imperial Castle), which was on the other side of the old city from us.  On the way we stopped and got lunch from a falafel stand at the little city market (farmers market) in front of the Church of Our Lady.  The self-guided tour of the castle was nice; they had to restore/rebuild a lot of the castle after WWII.   But several of the inner rooms such as the throne room are well preserved.  They also had a collection of medieval and renaissance period armor and weaponry.  From there we wandered back down to the square and got some ice cream. There are ice-cream places everywhere (like Starbucks); the Germans do seem to love their ice-cream.  We then went into the Church of Our Lady, which I expected to be very ornate inside, based on the outside of the church. However the inside had a rather simple classic style without a lot of gilding or carving.   We then wandered around a little more which included us rubbing the gold ring of Schöner Brunnen (Beautiful Fountain) for luck, getting a Nuremberg sausage sandwich, picking up some lebkuchen from Schmidt oldest maker of it in Nuremberg. We also saw a very interesting and rather strange fountain which translates into the “marriage carousel” and is a representation of the poem “Das bittersüße ehlich Leben” (bitter sweet marriage) written by Hans Sachs in 1541.  After seeing that fountain we returned to the hotel, were my husband and I might just order room service.  You can see pictures from the day here. 

Tomorrow we head to Rothenberg.