Europe Travel Diary 1987 07

We left Heidelberg quite early. For once, the sun was shining (although not at the angles I needed for photos, slide film being quite unforgiving of poor lighting).

We began by driving south the Karlsruhe, where we looked around the castle and the market square. Being Sunday, everything was closed, so although there were some beautiful gardens and old buildings to enjoy, we drove on to Stuttgart, the biggest city we had encountered in West Germany. We drove to a hill with an observation tower to look over the city, and we had lunch there.

From Stuttgart we drove on to Nördlingen, an old town with a circular form that is situated in a crater and is surrounded by a perfectly preserved wall. We walked around Nordlingen for about an hour, during which I ascended the church tower for some views across the town, admiring the pastel coloured walls on the myriad of uniformly angled, steeply pitched, red tiled roofs on the houses below.

The last sector of driving for the day was to Nuremberg (also called by its German name of Nürnberg). Although infamous for the large Nazi party rallies that were held there in the 1930s, Nuremberg is the best-preserved medieval city in Germany (East or West). This is surprising as it was largely destroyed during World War II, but preservation of remaining buildings and considerable reconstruction has preserved much of the old atmosphere.

Although we had the address of the Youth Hostel, it was surprisingly difficult to find, partly because of the winding maze of one-way streets, and partly because we hadn’t realised that the old castle we had been driving past was in fact our Youth Hostel! Being located in the renovated old castle on the top of a hill, our room had superb views across the old city and it proved to be a wonderful place to stay.

We had dinner “out” at a pizza restaurant, although after some difficulty with language, Di was surprised to find herself with a dinner of just some lettuce and cucumber, not quite what she was expecting.

Day 7

Heidelberg to Nuremberg

Sunday 19 July 1987