As the train pulled out of Koln at 7:35am it was rather weird to be in complete darkness. It didn’t even start to get light until almost 8:30. We were on our way to Nuremberg, home of one of the most talked about Christmas markets in Germany. We arrived at 11am and since it had worked so well in Koln, made our way to the tourist information office to see if accommodations were available. We were in luck and found a small hotel just a few blocks away from the train station and just outside the walled part of the city planning to stay for three nights. (Hotel Astoria) After settling in we made our way into the walled city to the heart of the altstadt (old city) to witness the splendor of this most renowned market. Nothing, we thought, could top the markets in Koln…we were right. At least as far as Nuremberg was concerned. We strolled through the market which was set up in the large square in nice neat rows. There seemed to be fewer hand-crafted goods here and most of it appeared to be mass produced for us tourist types. It just didn’t have the same feel and we were very disappointed. We made the most of it though, enjoying some of the foods on offer and listening to some caroling. It was cooler here than in Koln and I was thankful for the scarf that Nancy had picked out for me. We made our way to the fortress that rises above the town on a steep hill and arrived huffing and puffing to find out it was just closing for the day. We looked out over the city from a lookout to rest before descending back toward the market, deciding to return the following day to see what we had missed.

Now I have to digress for a moment, so bear with me…Nancy and I are in a football pool here in Egypt. After a miserable start to the football season for each of us, Nancy managed to win a few weeks and I won once. However we each did well enough each week to keep ourselves in the running for the overall pool which ended with the week 15 games that were being played the weekend of the 17th. In fact, going into the final week, Nancy was in first place a few games ahead of the next person and I was one game behind the person in second place. Neither of us was very confident in our picks that final week so we decided to check and see how we had fared with Sunday’s games at a local internet café. We looked…then we looked again. Nancy and I were tied for the week with the Monday night game being the deciding factor, we had picked different teams so it mattered who won the game, to see who won that weeks pot. What was more important was that Nancy had sown up the overall lead and I was solidly in second place. WooHoo!! (Nancy ended up winning the Monday night game!) Pretty good considering we hadn’t watched a game all season. This brightened our mood considerably. We made our way to one of two Irish pubs in town where we enjoyed some of the local brew, chatted, people-watched and watched some dart championships that were in progress.

The next day we set out to do some laundry, having brought only a few changes of clothes with us and were directed to a nearby laundry mat by the not so helpful hotel desk staff. We walked the 5 or 6 blocks to the address we had been given only to find the location with that address completely empty. So we trudged back toward the old city where we had seen a place the day before that might be open, if only we could find it again. Success! Halfway up the gigantic hill toward the fortress we found it, started our wash load then headed the rest of the way up the hill to see the fortress we had been denied entry to the day before. Arriving well exercised and only mildly out of breath this time we made our way to the ticket office where we were told that you could only see the place on a tour and that all the tours were in German. Since our German is pretty rusty, some say non-existent, we opted out and made our way back to the laundry where we were able to start our drying load. We started the drier and headed out to see more caroling that happens on the hour in the main market place. It turned out to be a CD playing and the winter queen talking to some children. After consuming bratwurst, potato pancakes and some chestnuts we headed back to our laundry to find some one had empty our drier and used the time for their clothes. Grrrrr, Nancy was mad. So we loaded all of our wet clothes into 2 driers and spent the next 45 minutes watching them tumble. Laundry turned out to be an all day event.


One of the more interesting things we saw in Nuremberg.................

Yes that's a stuffed bear in its jaws...the dog didn't seem insecure at all so we're guessing it must have eaten the bear's former owner.

We had already decided to cut our stay short and move on to Fussen and Munich, so we enjoyed the rest of the day in the market, bought our tickets, and headed home to pack.