Last full day in Bayreuth

Thursday August 8th was our last full day in Bayreuth as next day we were going to drive to Vienna for a couple of days of NO OPERA. There we would relax and soak up the sights before driving back to Munich on Sunday to catch a flight home (boo!) on Monday. So a lot of driving ahead but then I am ....Drivin' Adair. (at your service).

So with a last day in mind we managed to pack a lot more in and stepped up the pace a little.

I breakfasted alone around 7 a.m and texted Ciaran. We arranged to meet at his hotel, The Poseidon.
We were going to stroll the pedestrian area on Maximillian Strasse with a side-order of the Wagner House. I opted to walk and leave the car in the underground garage at the hotel.

This is the river running near the back of the hotel. There is no river walk to stroll on unless you like wading through deep grass. The river is called the Rot Main (Red Main).

There's a Ring Road that helps to keep traffic from the pedestrian center. Delivery trucks can go in there to stock the stores and restaurants. There's even a 24 hour casino there. Maximillian Strasse is the pedestrian hub, rich in shopping and dining opportunities. From it Richard Wagner Strasse begins as you get nearer to his house, which is set back from the street. You could miss it if driving.

I met up with Ciaran outside his hotel and we walked.

This part of the street is open to traffic.

As you can see everything is spic and span. Squeaky clean and organized. The town was bombed near the end of WWII and was rebuilt to look the way it was before. Even the Festspielhaus was bombed and closed until 1951 when two of the composer's grandsons started up the theater again.

While we were down in this part of the town we stopped by to see the Margrave Opera House which had lured Wagner here with a promise of a stage big enough for his Epic operas but he hated the gilded interior and the orchestra pit was too small for the 120 or so musicians needed for some of his operas. But he liked the look of the town so he thought about building his own theater....

"Es regnet".... it's raining.

We did walk to the Wagner house to view it though the scaffolding.

They had some Wagner posters up along the security fence to stop people falling into the deep pit around the house...

Wagner in his 30's

And as a family man in his 60's

A little soft drizzle wasn't going to hold us back as we couldn't now put things off until tomorrow. Ciaran was going to be catching a train to England at 5.30 a.m so it was now or never for our one excursion during our time in Bayreuth. We were going to take a short drive of 8 miles or so to a fabulous tourist attraction called the Eremitage.

So that's coming up next