Bamberg

Our first day-Jetlag day- was out of the way. We had taken a 90 minute nap to take the sting out of the time difference and 9 hours on an airplane and then rejoined the local inhabitants and got into their Sunday rhythm. A good night's sleep was enjoyed and we woke up on Monday morning refreshed and ready for the week ahead. We had 4 days in Bayreuth to look forward to, followed by the long drive to Vienna where we would spend 2 short days, then a long drive back to Munich to round off the week and be closer to our favorite airport.

Our plan was to eat in the hotel garden at 9 a.m but of course I was on the streets by 7 and took a coffee down to the Isar River which is at the end of the street and sat on a bench to watch Munich going to work. Watch out for the bicycles!

Then the buffet breakfast in the garden...

The sound of Blackbirds singing in the bushes....Carol is leafing through the guide book looking for lunch spots in Bamberg.

The breakfast is a big spread of cereals, various cold-cuts of meats, a variety of cheeses and vegetables, breads we don't see in the USA and Carol's favorite-a boiled egg. There are lots of bread-spreads such as honey and the wonderful lick-it-off-the-spoon Nutella. There are maybe 30 dishes of food to choose from and the good coffee keeps on coming as a waitress or two works the 7 or 8 garden tables.

The Hotel has really no other facilities apart from a cosy, tiny bar just off the lobby. It maybe seats half a dozen people in comfy armchairs. No gym, no conference rooms, no grand lobby. The rooms are small, the bathrooms are minute but functional. The staff are all you could wish for and it is our home in Munchen.

We need to get moving though and so we packed after breakfast and I went to the garage to get the car. It took three laps around the block on those narrow streets before I found a space long enough to park in front of the hotel to load up our luggage.

Through the maze of local streets, being careful to avoid the electric trams which are a great way to get around the city, one suddenly comes to a little slip road among the trees and now we are on the Autobahn and 'ere long out of Munich and into the rolling, fertile countryside that abounds in Germany. Wind turbines are everywhere. colorful patchwork fields of alfalfa and mustard.

The road is smooth as glass and the Jaguar with 350 or more horsepower and a Diesel engine effortlessly glides along at 130 mph. The road is only two lanes wide so there's a need to watch your rearview-mirror just incase anyone doing beyond 130 needs to get by.

We always take CDs to play but seldom use them as we like to listen to German classical radio as it tunes the ear into their meticulous speech and helps us when we are ordering meals or asking for directions.

So at those speeds on is soon where they were going and we came off the autobahn and entered the narrow busy streets of Bamberg, which I believe is a UNESCO World Heritage site as it is beautiful.

We were following directions to this restaurant with a river view but they kept taking us up and up and into narrower and even more narrower cobbled streets. On some there were delivery trucks pulled up half on the sidewalk and it was tight getting by. Then there were the acute turns where a hinged car would have been good. I was very concerned with scratching the pristine paint of the Jag.

We stopped to get our bearings and 50 yards away a German saw us and came over-as they all do- to help. He gave us good directions to get out of there and get parked as we really needed to proceed on foot.

Once parked we set off in search of our target but it wasn't a restaurant it was Bamberg Cathedral as we figured we could last a while longer for food but the Cathedral was only open until 5 p.m

Bamberg is small and compact so it was better on foot anyway and certainly less stressful for me.

We could see our goal up ahead when we stopped for a refreshing beer at a riverside bar...