Trials and Tribulations

Pre-dawn frost, JP walked the dogs up a steep hill, seeking out the local putt-putt facility and indoor basketball court. With a lovely walk, a hilltop pre-dawn view of the city, and a quick run through the woods, JP returned for a quick bite, then we headed out for Nuremberg.

It’s a holiday week, and the trains are packed!

Arriving in Nuremberg, a friendly local gave us some tips and off we went.

Leaving the station, we crossed into the old tower, stopping in a metal smith shop, and then off through the cobble stone streets.

Someone in our family <sarcasm>HAD TO</sarcasm> stop in the Lush store, just to see if it was different from home. Needless to say, JP might’ve kept on walking.

We also found an Ikea? Yay…

The facades of these gothic churches are absolutely stunning. The ornate etchings, carvings, and motifs were so beautiful. All handcrafter, and laboriously set in place by craftsman who probably never had seen a piece of safety harness, ever!

Cruising through the early morning markets of this city is quite a delight. Most of the holiday street vendors are still setup, so there’s fresh hot nuts, candies, fruits, veggies, shawarma, pickles, cheese, and many other vendors.

We passed through a bunch of market spaces, and a town square. Crossing a quiet river, and viewing a boat full of life and death.

Our hope was to visit the Toy museum and City Dungeon Museum. Sadly, the Toy Museum is closed on Mondays, and the Dungeon Museum requires advance registration, and if you want the Englisch tour, it is scheduled to start at 4:30p (just a tad too late for our schedules).

Just up the hill from the Dungeon Museum is the Nuremberg palace. Let’s go!!!

Whew, it’s a slog to get up this steep hill.

One would think, this is steep, i need a rest. But no, the jawas saw boulders at the base of the entrance to the castle and decided that they needed to boulder. In plain shoes!!!

And even at the top, you have to climb more just to get inside the castle.

Alas, we made it to the top of the palace, took in the view of the city, and decided it was time to eat some food.

Looking for a vegan place, JP found the Katzentemple. Yes, a vegan restaurant dedicated to cats. Sadly, we did not have a reservation, and right now this town is packed, so we had to find a different place to eat. Don’t worry though, we’ll be back!

En route to another vegan restaurant, we happened to walk past JP’s most exciting place: A Piano Store.

Mind you, this is no ordinary piano store. This is a Bechstein piano store.

Only pianists and piano aficionados would understand.

Essentially, this is like finding a gold mine when you were searching for potatoes. Po-Tay-Toes!

Like, yeah, we get it, JP, you like the piano Mr DriveByPianist. It’s amazing, and let’s enjoy it, but peeps are hungry.

Moving on, we grabbed some food at a non-descript joint, tea at Tee Gschwendner and JP picked up some pipe tobacco.

The parts of Nuremberg that we visited are old city, and there’s a lot of history here. We know the city became internationally famous for the Nuremberg trials, however we did not feel we needed to revisit this part of history quite yet.

We did discuss the war, the history, and the ease in which a country slid into fascism. But these topics are also a bit deep for the Jawas, so we had to dial it back and find other topics the girls could discuss, like food and school.