No two days are the same and travel includes amazing moments as well as the unpredictable and challenging - that sums up today.
A couple more bits re the beautiful Schwarzes Lamm hotel where we stayed last night (there will be a picture of it on facebook) - it served as the local miltary headquarters during the 30 years war in 1634 - the church across the road was consecrated in 968 - and note they rang the bells 3 times at 6.00am and full ring at 7.00am this morning! What must happen on Sunday???
Beautiful breakfast included the best minni-sausages I've ever tasted.. However, the day was bleak and raining quite steadily and we headed south using the sat-nav but it wanted to take us via the autobahn instead of the Romantc Road so we turned her off and relied on the signage which turned out to be a bit of a problem - there were roads closed everywhere (not sure why, think it was wet roadworks) and the Germans refuse to show detour signs so just had to guess directions and hopefully re-find a "Romantische Strase" sign.
Stopped at a beautiful little bakery in Schillingsfurst - absolutely beautiful tarts and great coffee for 7 Euro - that's $10 (only get two cups of coffee for that at Sexie Coffe). Took a while (see road closures above) to get to Nordlingen which is another fully walled medieval city. Raining quite steadily so checked out the shops (beautiiful again) and found a cafe which turned out to be a training centre for kids with disabilities - amazing guy in charge and they looked aftter us with hot chocolate and bagles for lunch - very happy and special group and we really enjoyed having lunch with them.
Paradoxically the next stop was a town called Rain which was also beautiful. All these towns and villages are quite similar. The architecture is typically German of course but they are all perfectly maintained, painted in bright colours. The countryside reminds us of France - lots of different crops here (corn, sunflower, lucern, canola) but no grapevines as yet. Being in Bavaria, we've also been going through numerous beautiful forests - always very green of course. Cyclists please note - this would be a fabulous area to cycle - country is undulating and there are cycle tracks everywhere. Strangely none of the cyclists we saw today looked all that cheerul!!
Although wet all day today, it didn't really matter as we were either in the car or just wandering from shop to shop (or cafe) and we'd prefer rain this week rather than next and the forecast for next week is good with the rain supposedly finishing tomorrow (Saturday) Just to cap off the "road challenged" day, the sat-nav would not recognise the address of the "Park Ambiente" hotel where we are staying tonight and then roads in the town of Friedberg are closed for today until Sunday for a huge marathon - the information centre was closed (????) - found girl in a shop who happily gave us directions and eventually arrived. Rewarded with the biggest "suite" we've been in, beautifully decoated and appointed. Bliss.
Off to a Bavarian Restaurant recommended by the very pleasant owner here so hopefully it will be good.
Absolutely everyone we've met today in bakery, cafes, shops etc have been absolutely delightful - people made the day!
Trivia: The "Romantic Road" was a concept created after WW11 to provide a trip away for the American and British toops occupying Germany when on leave.
Cap report; still good but fairly wet tonight!
cheers all
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