Norman and Mary's road trip: Ahhhh traveling......

Before leaving Nürnberg we managed to see a few more sites. We loved Nürnberg. By coincidence, right across the street from our hotel was a store that sold postcards!! Well it mostly sold stamps but Norm found some vintage postcards, a few from Canada and the U.S. Can you believe it? The store was really messy and the owner, somewhat elderly and smelly (sorry about that but true).

You can sort of see him in the store window with Norman. I didn't want to be rude by taking his photo but he was truly a character.

Also near our hotel was the Nuremberg castle, home of the Holy Roman Emperor when he visited town and this day we could go inside the courtyard. Nuremberg in the 1500s was the dominant city in what is now Germany, known for its metalworking trades.

Time to check another church, St. Sebald, a holy man and something of a hermit, whose remains are in an ornate casket inside the church. The legend was he told the locals to load his body on a wagon and where the of stopped, they built a church.

And St. Lorenzo. No pews set up in this one. Both gothic styles.

This is the only church I have seen that had a jukebox. It did play church music not Elvis.

We had to try the recommended cakes at the Cafe Neef.

Rhubarb with meringue for Norman and apricot for me. Way too big but yummy.

As we left Nürnberg I had to take a photo of the statues found on many corners of the streets, mostly religious.

On to Munich by bus. We arrived in Starnberg about 25 minutes from Munich where Alice, friend of Holland's since preschool picked us up. Nice to be in a family home for a few days.

Here is Norm being an excellent grandpa with Genoveva and Augusta.

Wednesday we decided to explore the town of Starnberg by walking through a nature reserve/woodland park. It had rained all the night before and continued to rain all day Wednesday. We were soaked but did have a great walk.

Along the way are Roman ruins, the Villa Rustica, a house from about 15 years BC. Poor retired Roman soldier, pining for the sunny skies of his native Spain. At least he had under-floor heating -- the hypocaust -- that kept his villa a cozy 21degrees C. The Romans were here two thousand years ago.

Soaked we returned home by bus from the town of Starnberg, an affluent place with about 20,000 residents, and a Maserati dealership!

Travelling brings out the resourcefulness. Guess what.....another train strike in Germany. This affects not only our plans to get to Köln for our bike trip but getting in and out of Munich, as the suburban S-Bahntrains are part of the German rail network. We have now learned more about Bla Bla Cars, sharing rides with others, flights to Köln and intercity buses. Turns out the car sharing is full up and flights very costly. We are going by bus, 7-8 hours. We now will be leaving Friday and spending the night in Köln before boarding the bicycle barge.

So our time in Munich got cut short. We caught the S Bahn early this morning, which is running only once an hour to Munich instead of the usual three trips an hour. We saw an excellent show by Keith Haring, Opera House, statues of course and walked about the market, Viktualienmarkt. It has been going for 200 years selling lots of fruits and meats. Of course we bought things.

The Rathaus.