Day 6 Wine Fest and 7 Sunday Ride

Vacation Day 6
Running, Laundry and Wine Fest
Went out running with Jen again. She took me on a different route this time. She said it was shorter and went down hill for a while and then it was a long uphill. I figured I would run the down hill part and then see how far I got on the up hill. Running without my heart rate monitor is a learning experience, I have to pay attention to how hard I am breathing to know what is happening.

So we started down the path, then up the hill to the new corner.
I started going down the hill and it went on and on. At one point I thought about walking, but running downhill in the shade of huge pine trees is not that hard and it gets me to the end faster so I just kept going and going. Then finally I saw we were coming out of the woods and into the hot sunshine. I planned on walking if we turned that way! Turns out we didn't go that way, but the turn did take us up hill so we walked it until we got to another long down slope. That was a really good run. I would love to have paths like this at home. I would wear my trail shoes though, the stone guard under my forefoot would be nice out here. The gravel is typically small, but I manage to dodge most of the bigger pieces. The ones I don't miss come through my road shoes and hurt.
So after we got done running we headed to base to do laundry. 220 volt washers are expensive so they haven't gotten one yet. The laundromat was not busy so we got done in good time.



Then in the afternoon we went over to Lisberg to take part in a wine fest at a castle with a tower that was originally built in the year 820.

We went on a tour of it, with a German speaking guide, didn't get much out of what he said, but got the just of the story. It is old, there have been additions added over the years by different owners with their own tastes that are visible as you walk through it. It was worth the look. We came from there and tasted some wine and bought some and then went home for an evening of card playing.

Vacation Day 7
Sunday Drive on a Train
Billy and I went to the train station with very little plan other than to catch the first one out. We went to Nuremberg and found a map on the train that showed us all the places we could go with our day pass. We picked Schwandorf because it looked interesting and was east of anywhere we had been. On that train we met a lady that spoke very good English. she told us a few interesting things along the way. One of which was to point out the castle that Nicholas Cage bought a couple of years ago. We found out later that there was a big row about it in the local papers because they thought he would do something wrong to it. The lady we were talking to said it was a good thing he bought it, the upkeep is terribly expensive and he has been doing a lot of remodeling to enhance the property. In Schwandorf we looked for what had caught our attention, but it turns out that was nothing we were really interested in seeing. So we had lunch.


I started taking pictures of our lunches because some of them are very interesting to look at. Those will be in another blog. On the way back to the train station we found a water wheel by a park.



The next train we got on took us north. The scenery was really nice to look at, but I was tired after a big lunch. SO I took a little nap, the German teenagers sitting across the aisle from us had a bit of a laugh at that. After that I started getting silly with the camera and took a few pictures from the train.



That didn't work so well.
Neither did in the train when it is rolling.
Sitting still works nice though. This is a train car door.



The train is nice to view from, when the trees aren't in the way, but not great for pictures when it is moving. We headed back to Bamberg after a while and ended the day playing cards and drinking more beer.