Day 38: Nürnberg

We were up an out of our Regensburg apartment early. We caught our train to Nürnberg and checked into our apartment, all without much confusion. After a little bit of rest and down time, we headed into the old town of Nürnberg. (Apparently we were not the only people who thought it would be a good idea to stroll through the streets of the old town and visit the Nürnberg Christmas market on a Saturday afternoon less than two weeks before Christmas - it was packed!) Although Nürnberg was the second most destroyed city in Germany during World War II, it was rebuilt to look like the original style, so you still feel like you are walking through medieval streets. Nürnberg is also the only city we have seen so far that left it's medieval city wall mostly intact. There are a few remaining towers and massive gates that really help one to understand the weaponization of the city. There are still a few of the old granaries that were used to store enough grain to last the people of the city should they come under seige. Though the buildings have been re-purposed, the size and number give an indication as to the mindset of the people at the time. We looked across at the Fleischbrücke, literally "meat bridge," where the butchers and tanners worked centuries ago using the river as a convenient place to dispose of unneeded parts. We stopped to check out the Ship of Fools monument, celebrating the wood carvings created by hometown hero, Albrecht Dürer, to illustrate the 1494 book of the same name.

We made our way through the crowds to St. Lawrence Church - like so many churches that we have visited, this one was started in the 13th century, but took hundreds of years to be completed. The church is not a cathedral, because Nürnberg never had a bishop - they were an imperial free city.
Upon entering the church, we were treated to organ music, a Christmas concert featuring the music of Bach, coming from the massive organ in the rear of the church in conjunction with a smaller, but still massive, organ up front. We sat for a while to listen - it was awesome!










We continued on through the Christkindlsmarkt - perhaps the most famous in Germany. We sampled the local sausage specialty, the Nürnberger, which is three small sausages on a roll - they were delicious! The Nürnberg Christmas Market is filled with hand-made ornaments and trinkets, one of which is the Zwetschgenleute - the prune people. They are little people made of prunes and decorated in traditional German attire - the man at one of the booths was very proud to tell us that these prune people are a 200-year old tradition and they can only be found in Nürnberg at the Christkindlmarkt (he resembled the prune people quite a bit, we thought).

We stopped at the Schöner Brunnen (Beautiful Fountain) at the far side of the square and spun the brass ring on the gate for good luck.

Then we made our way up to the Kaiserburg, Imperial Castle. The Castle was built in the Middle Ages and used when the Holy Roman Emperors were in town.

There was a concert about to begin in the castle courtyard, so we were not able to tour the inside, but we walked around outside and had a great view over the wall down into the town. From there, we made our way past the Albrecht Dürer  House, through the Tiergärtnertor to the public transportation that would take us to Stein, just south-west of Nürnberg, to the Kristall Palm Beach indoor swim center.

Kristall Palm Beach was a great place for us to relax, for the boys to get a lot of exercise and for us all to have some good family fun. There was a wave pool, with ocean-like waves that came in twice an hours for 10 minutes. There was a sun beach (actually tan carpet with sun lights). There were multiple hot tubs and if we had been there in the summer, there would have been a trampoline area as well. But, the real hit of the day was the Rutschengebiet - the slide area. From little kiddy slides up to a slide that you had to be over 15 to ride, this place had everything. There were at least a dozen slides! The two favorites were the Schwarzes Loch (black hole), which sent you down in pitch black and added a final steep drop at the end, just as you thought you were done and the Pegasus II, which started by dropping the floor out from under you sending you straight down a clear tube (so you could see the outside go by) and then launched you into two loops. We returned to the apartment quite exhausted and went right to bed!