Sunday April 13-Saturday April 19
France, Germany and Austria
As I am late in posting, today’s blog may leave you feeling that you have gone back in time…. back to Easter. Sunday April 13th is Palm Sunday. We attended church in Rouffach. I always think it is interesting to see how other countries/cultures celebrate familiar events. At our churches in the United States, worshipers receive palm leaves on Palm Sunday. In Rouffach, we carried various types of greenery decorated with colored ribbons. The pinks, purples and blues add a really festive look.
After Sunday lunch, we headed with Alessandro, Max and Lise to Colmar. The city is so beautifully decorated for Easter. Most of the towns and villages in Alsace have very elaborate Easter displays with flowers, eggs, bunnies and chickens. (…..and more eggs, bunnies and chickens. Then you walk another block and guess what? More eggs bunnies and chickens. I’m still a bit confused about the whole bunnies and chickens laying eggs together but who am I to question the life styles of small French animals. I’m also a bit perplexed as to where the egg trees come into the equation? It was just a confusing time for me.)
Monday was a real treat. We travelled to Germany to visit the thermal pools at Bad Bellingen. The spa includes one inside pool and two outside pools with thermal mineral water. The pools have various features like massaging jets along the walls, a lazy riveresque area that floats you along, lounge chairs in the water with massaging jets, and a thermal water shower. There is also a cold pool, which is supposed to be very good for you but felt like torture to me. The mineral water does wonders for your skin. We spent the entire evening at the spa. Floating in the thermal water while looking at the stars was so relaxing.
https://www.bad-bellingen.de/therme
We spent a rainy Tuesday at the Eco Museum. For readers from Southern Indiana, think about the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial, on steroids. The Eco Museum is France’s largest outdoor museum. The museum consists of 80 buildings, set up like an Alsacienne village. The buildings are old buildings that have been moved to the museum from other locations. It is a fantastic way to learn about history and preserve these beautiful structures. We first visited the museum in 1991, and it has really been expanded since that time. ( Warning: to any of you that visit the museum, the billy goat is an asshole and doesn’t like it when you pet him. I had a similar experience with a potbellied pig, once but I don’t like to talk about it.)
Paul and I again found ourselves with a few unscheduled days, so we decided to venture to another new country…Austria. Salzburg was a 6-hour drive from our home base. Salzburg is an amazingly beautiful city. Paul is a master at finding interesting places to stay and we stayed at a fantastic boutique hotel the Bloberger Hof. For a very reasonable price, we had a two-story room. The first floor was a living room with a balcony overlooking the mountains. Up a spiral staircase, you enter the bedroom and bathroom. It was so spacious, and the views were outstanding. The hotel was conveniently located near a bus station, for easy and stress-free access to the center of town. While in Salzburg we visited the Salzburg Cathedral, including an organ concert, the gardens at Mirabell Palace, Hohensalzburg Fortress and did a bus tour to nearby Hallstatt.
https://www.blobergerhof.at/de/
Hallstatt
I am not one who normally wants to do hokey touristy stuff, but we had to do the Sound of Music Tour. (There is nothing hokey about singing show tunes with a bus full of strangers!) We visited sites from the movie such as the location for the scenes filmed as the backyard of the Von Trap house, the gazebo for the famous 16 Going on 17 song, the church used in the wedding scene, and the fountains and arbor for Do Re Mi. (The best part of this was Kerrie reenacting the Von Trapp kids running through the arbor. I can only assume that none of them had a knee replacement.)
While Salzburg had not been on my radar in advance of the trip, I highly recommend it. The city is absolutely beautiful with activities that would appeal to almost anyone. Music lovers will enjoy it as it is the home of Mozart. Musical theatre lovers can appreciate the Sound of Music sights. There is beautiful architecture, historical sites and great shopping.
That is a wrap on week 4.
New To Do’s
- Relaxed in the thermal pools at Bad Bellingen
- Visited the country of Austria, in particular the city of Salzburg.
Coming up in week 5, another site of interest for fans of musicals, another new country, and a new castle
My52ToDo.com 