Rothenburg ob der Tauber – one of our favourite towns!
Tuesday 20 December 

We left Augsburg this morning on the 8.16am train which, after two changes of train, brought us to Rothenburg around 11am. We left the cases in Augsburg so with only a backpack each, the travel was a breeze! Rothenburg is the best preserved medieval town in Germany and we fell in love with it when we came here last year.

We started our visit today by doing a Rick Steve’s walk. After strolling through the Old  Town, we made our way to the Castle Garden and found a path which took us outside the town walls, down to the Tauber River. The river there was partly frozen, with a relatively thick covering of ice in some places and elsewhere flowing freely. The surrounding countryside was blanketed in frost and we were thankful for our down jackets, gloves and beanies.

We followed the path for two kilometres to the village of Detwang and enjoyed the picturesque scenery.

In Detwang we stopped at St Peter and St Paul’s Church where there is an artwork by sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (1460 – 1531), but the church was not open today.

We returned to Rothenburg by a different route, up a very steep but mercifully short path. We felt we had earned our lunch after that exertion and found a café where we enjoyed an apple strudel each, with a Coke for Ian and a coffee with Baileys and cream for me. We also visited the Christmas market which is based in the Old Town, surrounded by medieval houses.

We spent the next couple of hours visiting the Reichsstadt Museum which is housed in a former convent. We saw an immense collection of weapons, furniture, ceramics, craftsmen’s tools, paintings and sculptures covering nine centuries. The highlight for us was the 13th century convent kitchen which had many of its original fittings, such as the ‘monastery winch’ in the wall, a turntable barrel where food could be provided for beggars and pilgrims.

Monastery winch 

Medieval artificial hand

Our next stop was the Hotel Hornburg, just outside the town walls, where we checked in for the next two nights. We have a beautiful spacious room on the second floor with our own enclosed balcony.

After a short rest we returned to the town for dinner at the Gasthof Goldener Greifen before joining a crowd outside the Town Hall for a tour led by the Night Watchman. There were probably a hundred people of all ages on the tour and he kept everyone engaged with his dramatic and humorous stories of life in Rothenburg  through past centuries.

Innsbruck  to Augsburg
Monday 19 December 

The highlight of today’s journey from Innsbruck to Augsburg was the beautiful snow-covered landscape of the Bavarian Alps. Even in Innsbruck, as we walked to the station this morning, we could see a light dusting of snow along some parts of the road so we left that city with hope of seeing more on our journey.

We departed Innsbruck on a Regional Express train at 8.38am and arrived in Augsburg, Germany at 12.05pm, after changing trains at Weilhelm. Within the first hour we were passing through forests with patchy snow, and from the Tirol and through the Alps, especially around Garmish-Partenkirchen, there was a heavy covering of snow. We are now hopeful that there will be snow at Fussen and Neuschwanstein on Christmas Day!

In Augsburg we are staying at Airbnb accommodation provided by Klaus, an architect who lives upstairs while we have the spacious ground floor ‘cottage’. We stayed here in 2015 so it felt a bit like coming home! We had brought Christmas presents for him (a Victoria calendar and a knitted possum Christmas decoration which delighted him).

After some lunch at a local café we walked into town to visit the Golden Hall (Goldener Saal) at the Rathaus. It is a huge stunningly beautiful hall, with a golden ceiling, painted walls and a marble floor. Built in 1615, it was restored to its original glory between 1980 and 2007.

From there we went to the Christmas market and had a lovely time soaking up the atmosphere without buying very much. We enjoyed an apple punch each and bought the decorative mugs they came in. By 3.30pm it was starting to get dark and the Christmas lights were coming on in the city streets. We did a bit of supermarket shopping and then returned home for a dinner of nasi goreng while watching our first TV news since leaving home.

A Renaissance castle, a Golden Eagle and Christmas markets
Sunday 18 December

The day has been fine and cold with a thick frost on the grass in places. There is a light snow covering on the upper slopes of the mountains around the city.

We started the day with a ride on the Sightseer bus, taking an 18km circuit around Innsbruck and enjoying an interesting commentary.

We got off the bus at Schloss Ambras and spent an hour exploring this Renaissance castle. This was the residence of Archduke Ferdinand II, prince of Tyrol, who rebuilt an earlier castle in 1565 as a home for his world-famous collections. It is considered to be the oldest museum in the world!

One of Ferdinand ‘s largest collections was his armoury where we saw a display with seven young princes in armour, protected by their caretaker giant, also in armour, who was 2.6m tall!

Other highlights of the castle were the inner courtyard with its frescoed walls, the chanel and the beautiful Spanish Hall, with its full-figure portraits of the princely rulers of Tyrol.

Inner courtyard

The Chapel

The Spanish Hall

The second stop on our bus trip was at the ‘Tirol Panorama’ where we all piled off the bus to take photos.

We had lunch today at the Goldener Adler (the Golden Eagle), a very popular and long-standing Innsbruck restaurant which Ian booked back in March. Ian chose an entrée of mashed potato with quails’ breasts and pumpkin, followed by Austrian rib-eye steak with a bell pepper sauce and potato wedges. My choice was a beef bouillon with a cheese dumpling, followed by Grostl (a typical Tyrolean dish of sliced beef and potato topped with a fried egg), and finely shredded cabbage and bacon on the side. We both enjoyed a bottle of Austrian red wine (variety - blaufrankisch).

We had a lovely afternoon wandering through the three Christmas markets in the city area. It was very festive with lots of young family groups enjoying the sights, choirs singing carols and people of all ages enjoying themselves. By four o’clock it was starting to get dark and the stalls were festooned with fairy lights. Just how we had imagined a European Christmas would be!

Venice to Innsbruck
Saturday  17 December

After an early morning walk to take some photos of lights on the Grand Canal, we left our hotel with our porter at 5.15am to catch a train to Verona. It was amazing how well the porter’s trolley carried our cases up and down the steps on our way to the station.

We arrived at Verona at 6.50am and had to wait an hour before the left luggage office opened. After depositing our cases, we set out to walk to the Roman Arena. Unfortunately we must have missed a turning somewhere because, after walking for about half an hour, we discovered we were on the wrong road and had to turn back. At 11am we caught the train to Innsbruck and enjoyed the scenery on the way: lots of vineyards, alpine villages and rugged mountains, some capped with snow.

We arrived in Innsbruck at around 2.30pm and made our way to the Hotel Weisses Kreuz in the centre of town, just a few doors from the famous Golden Dachl. After checking in, we took a funicular followed by a cable car to Hungerburg and then to Seegrube where we had terrific views back across the town to the mountains.

At Hungerburg there was a small Christmas market where I bought a small Santa ornament. We also enjoyed a bratwurst sausage with mustard while listening to a brass band.

Back in the city we had a quick look at the vibrant Christmas market which is very close to our hotel, bought some chocolate nougat gingerbread and chocolate apple gingerbread, and listened to another brass band, this time playing on the balcony of the Golden Dachl, before returning to the hotel.

Ships, bells and an amazing clock
Friday  16 December 2016

We enjoyed breakfast in the hotel dining room, while watching the locals crossing Campo Santa Maria Formosa, children being taken to school and a fruit and vegetable stall being set up.

Our first destination for the day was the Museo Storico Navale (Navy Historical Museum). Ian’s navigation skills were not as precise as yesterday so the route we took was quite circuitous. It was most interesting to see some of the quieter residential areas that we found ourselves in.

The collection of vessels in the Ships Pavilion was fascinating and wide-ranging. There were gondolas (including a hearse), fishing vessels, a royal barge and motor boat, canoes from Somalia, a torpedo boat, and the boiler room from the Elettra, a German World War 2 ship which had previously been used by Marconi for radio experiments. We spent several hours there and took a lot of photos!

Royal Barge detail

The boiler from the Elettra

Next stop was the San Giorgio Maggiore church, on an island across from St Mark’s Square. There we saw several paintings by Tintoretto. The church was designed by Palladio but I found its low-key white colour scheme quite unexciting.

St George and the dragon

A modern artwook

The highlight though was an elevator ride to the top of the campanile (bell tower) where we had some wonderful views over the city of Venice and the lagoon.

 The experience of riding in that elevator though was a bit disorienting, with brief glimpses through openings in the tower walls. We both felt some unease, especially Ian who has been seeing a psychologist about his long-standing fear of heights and had resolved to test himself later today by taking part in a tour of St Mark’s Clocktower. Before that tour though we needed some lunch so we took the vaporetto back to St Mark’s Square and shared a panini.

We made our way to the Correr Museum where we found our tour guide, a very vivacious young woman who, despite speaking incredibly quickly, gave a fascinating commentary as she led our group up the several levels of rooms inside the Clocktower. The tower was originally built in 1496-1497 and both the clock and the tower have had several changes over the centuries. A permanent clock keeper was appointed from 1551 and a keeper lived in the tower until relatively recently.

Four figures from the clock

One of the sections of rotating numbers on the clock

We are very pleased to report that, despite some initial nervousness, Ian enjoyed the tour and was able to stand on the top level of the tower and take photos of the spectacular views!

The next event for the day was to check out of our hotel and move to one close to the Santa Lucia station. This had become necessary because we discovered not long before leaving home that a mistake had been made by the agency that booked our train to Innsbruck which required us to catch a much earlier train than we had anticipated. Rather than try to find our way from one side of Venice to the other with our cases at 4 or 5am, we had decided to move!

When we arrived at our new hotel, the Antiche Figure, however,  we discovered that they were overbooked. They proposed that we could move to another of their properties, the Canal Grande, a short distance away. After our long walk with our cases, we were not at all happy with this suggestion – but what could we do?! A guide took us to our new accommodation, offered to provide us with packed breakfasts and suggested that, for a small fee, a porter would take our cases to the station in the morning.

After a short rest there, we set out for dinner at Trattoria ‘Vini da Arturo’, back near San Marco. We had enjoyed a meal there in 2013 and made a booking again. We remembered that our hosts had a collection of  bank notes from around the world so Ian produced one of our new $5 notes which they were very happy to receive. We had a lovely meal although we both struggled to keep awake by the end of it - jetlag seemed to be finally catching up with us! Then it was back to our hotel by vaporetto and finally to bed after a second day in wonderful Venice.

Christmas in Europe 2016

Following our trip to Europe in 2015, Ian and I decided to treat ourselves to a short trip this year to experience a European Christmas. We hope to enjoy a White Christmas and have some fun choosing Christmas gifts for the family at the famous Christmas markets of Germany and Austria.

Wednesday 14 to Thursday 15 December 2016
Melbourne to Venice

After a heart-stopping race to catch Skybus to the airport in 2015, this time we left home at 2pm for a 6.45pm flight. Of course we arrived at the airport three hours before our flight – but in a much more relaxed state of mind.

We flew to Venice via Singapore and Dubai. At both airports we were surprised by the Christmas decorations. We could have been in any western shopping mall when we were in the Duty Free area in Singapore and even in Dubai there was a small display of Christmas trees.

A mural at Singapore Airport

Christmas display in Singapore 

At Dubai Airport

We arrived in Venice at 1.20pm and, after taking a bus from the airport and then a vaporetto to the Rialto, we managed to negotiate our way through the calles and campos to our hotel, Hotel Scandinavia. We left our cases there and set out for a tour of the Fenice Theatre. The Fenice was originally built in the 1700s and has been destroyed by fire twice, most recently in 1996, and rebuilt both times. It is now once again a glorious rococo masterpiece and we spent some time there, following an audioguide through the theatre, into the royal box and the restored function rooms.

The Royal Box

Venice has been beautifully decorated with hundreds of tiny lights for Christmas. We enjoyed walking around the city and Ian was especially pleased as he successfully navigated without using a map – amazing in a city which is a labyrinth of small alleys and islands joined by numerous bridges!

We had dinner at the famous and elegant Caffe Florian in St Mark’s Square – lasagne followed by an apple torte for Ian and potato and rosemary quiche and a very rich chocolate Sacher Florian for me – a lovely way to end our first day in Europe!