Gasthof Sonnblick Heiligenblut

... some time to walk the ancient walls of the town, which afforded it protection at one time.

The guide told us that the town was saved from a bombing by a US military man. Evidently in his boyhood home, his mother had hung a picture of Rottenburg and he had always wanted to visit the town as he was particularly fond of the picture. Years later, when the US troops had planned on ...

... housed everything from Wheels that were used to execute people,
to masks put on people as punishment for acting like a pig or
gossiping. The medievil times were a hard place to live by the look
of it! Interrogation often involved torture and that was a legitamate
way to gain a confession. So a few hours were spent in the museum, we
then hustled over to St. Jakobs church to have a look at the wood ...

So, today was the firs chance to sleep and gee..I really would have liked to have done that. Dan managed to sleep on the super hard bed in the apartment we were given, I on the other hand woke up with back pain at 2.30am..and at various times from there on. The upstairs apartment then also woke me and kept me awake from about 8.30am..so I got out of bed and moved to lounge room to try and sleep on the couch to make my back feel better..it worked abit and I dozed for a ...

... it was around 8pm. The gate entry was narrow and it had cobblestone roads, you have to have a permit to park in the walls of Rothenburg and our hotel had permission for us to park. The roads were narrow but the town was very pretty and our Gasthaus was easy to find.
The little chick showed us the apartment in broken english, it has 2 rooms one as a living room the other as a bedroom and seperate kitchenette ...

So today I woke up showered and had a salami sandwich for breakfast and Reena showed me a book about a very famous Opera house in Bayreuth. She said I can look through the pictures and see the inside as we will drive by it and look at the outside on the way to the train station. After talking a little over breakfast we went and toured the main city center for about 45 min before my train left ...

After a few hours we reached Bayreuth where we picked up Reena, Wilfried's wife and we went to Hof, this is where my grandmother grew up and spent her childhood. Wilfried’s sister still lives in the house so we were able to tour the house and how all the stories my grandmother told me made so much more sense. I had never imagined it to be like this but this is why it was so amazing to see it. Wilfried also took ...

... it was stored. It was night, so he took a torch with him. But that wasn’t a very good idea to take fire into a room with a bunch of gunpowder, because there was an accident and the gunpowder exploded. That left a gaping hole in the town wall, and the Catholics were able to swarm into the city and take it. The Catholics lost around 300 men and Rothenburg only two (the guy with the torch, and another guy who was too close to the guy with the torch). The Catholics only ...

... atmospheric with a walkway through the cells underneath. The tour with the nightwatchman lived up to it's rep and it felt like we were a scene from the pied piper, he had a huge following the night we went. We did a day trip to bamberg and nuremberg and back to wurzberg ( we liked it). Found the beautiful garden area out the back after walking the walls, too late to explore further as our bus was due to leave. And ...

On out first full day in Austria, we took a scenic drive up the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße to the base of the Großglockner, Austria's highest peak at 3,798m. The long and winding road took us through some of the most spectacular mountain scenery I have ever seen. It was a clear, sunny and relatively warm day, making the high altitude experience quite pleasant ...

... found in every bakery there. I don't know what they are made of...) After that, I walked to the train station and got the train to Würzburg.
IN Würzburg I went to the 'Rezidenz', a gorgeous castle from the 1700s with amazing frescoes on the ceilings. I did a tour of the castle, and then a tour of the city. Then I had some dinner, and now I am here sitting in an internet cafe. I have to leave now to catch the train back to Essen.

Hope u all had a wonderful weekend too!
Sarah