Once the boys arrived, we wanted to show them our town Freiburg and how we had become comfortable with the older parts of the city and what has turned out to be a favorite restaurant for Karen and I,   Schlappen.  Okay, maybe we were a tiny bit obsessed with it.  🙂  Before they arrived, we ate there for lunch Monday and I found a beer I loved!

Since I got Karen to sit in the bar area (but not at the bar, I’m still working on that) I saw another customer with this good-looking dark beer.  I asked the waitress about it and voila!  I’m drinking the Schwarzbier aus Tschechien.  Delicious!!!  And of course, we had to have our pizza again.

Okay, I can be honest.  This version wasn’t quite as good as our first one.  Today’s cook put waaaayyyy more spices and sauce on this one.

Back to the boys……………………after our initial choice, then our second choice and then our third choice for dinner didn’t pan out Monday evening, we walked to Schlappen.  It gave me a chance to drink my new favorite beer again and also to get those delightful, crispy tasty potatoes that are their specialty with both choices of dip – spicy garlic and also the ketchup.  We like to dip the potatoes in both.  Yum.

A salad, flammekuchen and lamb were our dinner choices.

The beer got the Munich stories started and we started hearing all of the tales and people they met over the weekend.  There was talk of a ‘guest’ blog post on my site, so we’ll see if it happens.  In the meantime, I wanted to include a few photos they sent.

Before getting on the road, we walked down to the morning market at the church.  The boys wanted to start the day with a local sausage.  Karen and I visited a bread & pastry truck, but alas, no photos.  Karen got a delicious cinnamon roll while I selected a pastry that included raisins.  Oh yes, and we both got pretzels to munch on throughout the day.

You might notice that they are wearing coats – it got cold!  At least for us Floridians who aren’t used to the chilly temps.  Overnight the temps got down to the low 40s and this was one of the few overcast days we experienced during our two weeks in Europe.

They also enjoyed visiting some of the produce shops and after hearing my initiation to ‘new wine’, 3 selected new wines were purchased (and drank) for the remainder of our vacation.

All too soon it was time to leave this part of Germany and head to Heidelburg since the boys picked up our rental car for the remainder of the trip.  We wanted to make the most of our drive and found the ‘Black Forest Open Air Museum’.  A few facts:

• Founded over 40 years ago as a museum of architecture while also experiencing living history directly.
• Six furnished farmhouses along with numerous outbuildings such as a sawmill, storehouse, distillery and chapel to name a few are available to view and walk through.
• It showcases how in people in the Black Forest lived in the last 400 years.

This barn is featured prominently in all of their advertising and looks  beautiful with their flower pots.  Unfortunately, they had been removed due to the lateness of the season. It was still a fun place to wander through, all the way up to the 3rd floor.

Also saw other interesting sites on the grounds.  Had to throw in a few flower photos – of course.

This is where I finally got to eat my Black Forest cake.  It was very good………but not my favorite dessert on the trip.  I’m afraid I’ve been too Americanized for the Black Forest cake we serve in the US.

We got in later than we wanted to Heidelberg, mostly due to the traffic we encountered.  Our instructions were to park in a nearby garage and our apartment would be within a few blocks.  We walked through the pedestrian zone with our suitcases, dodging all of the people traffic.

We’re staying in another apartment in their mile+ pedestrian zone of the old part of town.  Once we entered the hallway we were supposed to look for  red staircase.

Good thing we only had to walk up one flight – carrying the suitcases up was still a struggle- or maybe we were just tired.

Now the apartment.  Sometimes it’s amazing what living quarters we can create in unique spaces.

Bedrooms were on the second and third floors.  Bathrooms on the first and second floors.  Oh well, you can’t have everything. I did get the one photo of the Heidelberg Castle the night we arrived.  This is from an outside seating area on the top floor of our apartment.

While that outdoor seating area looked really cool when booking the place, the weather didn’t encourage outdoor eating and did you notice that stairway…………………….you had to carry everything up, enjoy your goodies, then (carefully) go back down the spiral stairway to the bottom where the kitchen was located.  My photos truly don’t give you any idea how skinny it was, especially between the second and third floors.

We were hungry and we were tired.  We walked to two different highly rated restaurants (one of which we couldn’t find) and  settled on this place.

The waiter took pity on us and said if we would wait 10+ minutes, he thought he could seat us as a few tables were getting ready (he thought) to pay.  He was right.  Ultimately, we enjoyed our meal and was happy with all of our selections.  They were a salad, wiener schnitzel with mushroom sauce, Nuremburg sausages with potatoes and lamb w/fries.

We topped off the meal with apple strudel.  It was very good, but……..

……the strudel was accompanied by a vanilla sauce (okay) and fruit salad with watermelon and cantaloupe.  You can just see the cantaloupe peeking out from under the strudel.  So I’ll repeat, it was very good, but a bit odd.  I’ll also share that there was nothing left on the plate by the time we were done.  🙂

Auf Wiedersehen!

 

Ginny