Voyage Junkie

The final day trip we took was to Nuremberg. It was a pretty quick trip from Munich, and it was good we'd saved it for last, as we had tired ourselves out with the long trips to Berlin and Heidelberg. Nuremberg is a smaller, solid city. It's downright normal and charming, while also being very much a city. It's like Cincinnati in that way. We spent a leisurely day walking the cobbled streets, checking out the famous market space, wandering the castle grounds, and of course eating lunch at a delightful restaurant. This is a view of the city skyline from a garden at the castle. We didn't spend a lot of time in the castle because much of it is rented out much like Burghausen . Also to go deeply into the castle requires money, and we spent this trip more in search of free experiences. Below, the top image shows the outdoor market, and the bottom image shows some of the architecture over a canal downtown. Matt was really excited to get this photo of Albrecht Dur...

Again using our trusty train passes, we journeyed to Heidelberg. This was a bit of a hike, as we took the high-speed train to Stuttgart, then changed to another local train which took us right to the historic district. We were able to easily walk to the beautiful old city, and saw gorgeous graffiti on the way. On the way into town, we didn't take this tunnel because we weren't sure of the directions. On the way back, we did, and it turned out way easier (and was also covered in spectacular graffiti). Once in the heart of the old city, we chose a Thai restaurant for lunch. Pictured below is the view from our outside table, at least before the hornets moved in a chased us inside. Can you spot the tourist trap kitsch on the left side of the frame? After our meal we wandered around the old city, checking out shops and cobbled streets. Matt wanted to visit the University library, so that was our main destination. It was an impressive structure both inside and out. The exterio...

I've been remiss in posting the rest of our Germany trip, and for that I apologize.  Matt and I got thrown into family gatherings and looking for jobs the minute we set foot on American soil.  Although we've only been back for about 2.5 months, it feels like a lot longer!  Partly this is due to just how much we miss traveling around Japan and Germany, and how much we want to go back, coupled with how hard it is to find a job in America these days.  But enough of our whining.  On to a magnificent castle! We were lucky enough to be able to visit Schloss Nymphenburg , pictured above in cloudy glory.  It was the summer home of Bavaria's rulers back in the day, and very Baroque in style.  Construction began in 1664 and wasn't finished for some time.  The view above is the front of the palace, seen over the second of two massive ponds filled with swans.  Where we are standing is close to the center point of the front entrance, which is ent...

There's not much to say about Saltzburg except that it's absolutely gorgeous.  We went there and back on a Bayern ticket, which is how we went to most places in Germany (up to 5 people can ride all day, any distance, for about 30 euro).  It was definitely worth the trip.  It's only a few hours train ride from Munich, and it was wonderful to step into Austria for a little bit. We came in at the downtown train station, a short walk from Schloss Mirabelle.  This is a baroque style palace done in French and Italian style.  Its famous gardens were beautiful, filled with color, and often planted in the patterns of family crests.  Scenes from the Sound of Music were filmed here, most famously the Do-Re-Mi song, where they dance around a horse fountain in the garden and use the steps as scales. After a look at the palace, we walked through town to the old part of the city.  Eventually we came to an open square where looking up we saw a very impress...

One of our lovely hosts, Christian, hails from the town of Burghausen.  We went to stay with his parents for a night and were treated to some spectacular sights as well as amazing traditional food.  The weather was gorgeous so we walked through the town to Burghausen castle.  It is the longest castle in all of Europe, at 1.051m, and it is truly enormous.  There are six "courts," or sections of the castle.  Each court was specific in purpose and historically housed very different types of people and affairs.  The sixth court is the outermost court, and has the clock tower, a guard tower, was a place for executions, and housed manual workers and couriers, among other things.  The fifth court holds the exterior chapel, an observation tower, a park (where we played on see-saws), and was the place for ducal administration with the granary and cashier's office.  The fourth court is the prison.  There is a hexenturm  or witch's tower, that...

On December 26th, in a flurry of snow, we boarded a train for Nagano Prefecture.  What can we say?  We were hit by longing for mountains - real mountains - and couldn't resist.  On a whim, we found lodging in Nagano City for a few nights, bought waterproof boots, and embarked on the nori-hodai  trip. It was actually much snowier in Gifu and Nagoya than it was in the mountains of Nagano prefecture.  This was welcome news, because if it had been very snowy we might have had to cancel our trip.  The lightly frosted mountains were lovely, rising into clouds of fog that obscured their true heights. One of my students, upon finding out I love visiting the castles, told me that I absolutely had to visit Matsumoto Castle.  The city of Matsumoto is on the way to Nagano city, so we made visiting it our first day's itinerary.  The city itself is clean, bright, and prosperous, with many interesting museums we intend to visit in the near future.  It...

 On April first we began our week-long vacation with previously mentioned good friends Alan and Krista.  The journey starts in Hikone, a smaller city with one of those original castles.  More of the castle is original than Inuyama's, where only the main keep (castle building) is original.  In Hikone, much of the defense structures are also original stone.  It's magnificent to behold; here I will try to give you a glimpse of the majesty. First, let me introduce Hikonyan.  He is the mascot of Hikone (each city has one) and my favorite so far.  To the left, he is doing his signature jump.  Hmm, a cat who does ballet in a samurai helmet?  Hard to see why I love him.    It amuses me to think of Hikonyan as the cat samurai version of this samurai to the right.  The statue is placed near the train station, continuing the trend I've observed so far of placing each city's great warlord statue in the vicinity of the train station...