Today was Sunday and we were a bit tired from our Saturday adventures so we tried to sleep in a bit. Andy woke up with a bit of a cold and I was still pretty worn out, so we took a leisurely day of just a bit of strolling around town, a bit of studying, and some eating.
After a small breakfast at home, we went for a stroll through the Altstadt (old city). We chose to walk some streets we hadn't walked before and found some interesting buildings of varying ages such as this half timbered building one street over from our hotel from last week.
And here is the door of the local methodist church. It's awkwardly placed for getting a photo of the whole building, though. This town has many churches!
Then we walked to Spitalbach Straße and make this panoramic photo of the Goethe Institute. Can you find Andrew in this photo?
Then we walked down to the river and over the Neue Straße bridge. Note the mixture of old and new architectures. The red contemporary building is the home of the local Lutheran something-or-other... parish? This is the west bank of the Kocher south of the bridge.
This is the west bank of the Kocher north of the bridge. On the left is part of Johanniterkirche which is now a museum. The middle building has a cafe on the balcony that we need to try one evening. Yes, these buildings are a bit wonky. They are old. Give them a break.
This is some sort of guard house in the middle of the bridge. Note the tandem cyclists stopped for moment to study their map.
Looking south up the Kocher. See the covered wooden bridge in the distance?
This is a memorial to Johannes Brenz who was the local Reformer who led this area into the Reformation. He was a contemporary of Luther, just a bit younger. This memorial is beside the red contemporary building seen above.
This is on the covered wooden bridge mentioned above looking back north down the Kocher.
These wooden bridges are all over the place. Most are for pedestrians only or for pedestrians and bicycles only.
We walked over to the little island in the Kocher and saw this large heron standing on top of a roof. Herons seem to be everywhere and anywhere around here.
This is a panoramic photo from the same spot, more or less. The heron is standing on the red-brown roof almost on the far right. The church tower can be seen (to the left of the big green tree in the middle) and the city call clock tower is peeking up a bit left of that. The green space in the middle is an island in the middle of the Kocher and we are standing on the west bank looking east at the Altstadt (old city).
We walked further over another smaller wooden bridge (see the tower on the right? We ate on the other side of it one of our first days in town).
Here's a panoramic photo from the island of the east bank.
And the same area photographed from the wooden bridge, looking east.
And turning around and looking at the west bank from the same bridge and spot.
We walked up the hill a bit and stopped at a traditional German restaurant called Schuhbach. We have walked by it many times but the draw today was 1) It is German. and 2) It has a lot of shade. It was quite warm today and we were tired so this shady spot on the narrow road between old buildings was lovely. The road here is quite steep and narrow. Mostly only pedestrians and cyclists come through here as the top of the hill (behind the photographer) is the city square (Markt) we've posted so many photos of before.
We were served this lovely salad.
Then Andy had some soup and Amelia tried the Käsespäzle with fresh fried onions on top. This is the regional equivalent of homemade mac and cheese, only with lovely local cheese and homemade Schwabian noodles. It was lovely but we could only eat about half without risking a cheese coma in the afternoon.
Here's a view looking back down the hill at the Schuhback restaurant. We had a nice conversation with the owner.
Just up from the restaurant are the three brightly colored city government buildings on the Markt. This one has a side door that is pretty interesting and not very tall.
Imagine our surprise when we found a meeting of the local vintage Alfa Romeo auto club parked in the middle of the Marktplatz between the church and the city hall! This is a panoramic photo made from low on the church steps. These cars were fantastic and in perfect condition.
We've walked past this fellow many times. He's on the sidewalk in a corner below the tourist information office near the corner of the Marktplatz.
Schwäbisch Hall is covered with statues and other art. Here's the wide view. He's slouching.
We wandered back home and worked on some homework and such then took another stroll. This time we walked down the alley that has this opening just beside our apartment building. We like the juxtaposition of old and new here.
Down the alley (which is steep) and down the stairs (27 of them that can't be seen here but are off to the left of the photo) we can look back up at our building (the tall one in the middle) and the Josenturm (guard tower beyond to the left). Our apartment is the windows you see in the stone part at the bottom (not the half timbered part of the upper four floors. From the street on the other side, our aparment is down one floor to the basement, but on this side we are still 1.5 floors above the street. You can also glimpse the hated garage door on the bottom right. It's some sort of access for the businesses in the modern building to the right behind us and it goes up and down randomly at night, even without cars apparent. It seriously needs an application of a barrel of WD-40!
From here we walked through the shopping area (nothing is open on Sunday except restaurants) and toward the Goethe Institut. This large frog stands nearby. Shirley Feaux needs to make one this size. He's about Amelia's height!
Andy wanted to have dinner at a Döner Kebab place so we tried a new one, Mosaik near the Institut. Most of these sorts of places are owned by Turks or other Middle Eastern or Central Asians and include all sorts of things on the menu. This one does not seem to serve Wurst! However, it does serve the equivalent of gyros, as well as burgers, pizza, and all manner of other things. Amelia had a chicken burger (basically chicken schnitzel).
Andy had a pizza.
We walked around bit more and explored some of the smaller streets we had not seen before. We found a working telephone booth. Who knew they still existed?
And we found some giant Deutschmarks in a little square between some buildings.
These really were huge, and the area had some lovely flower beds and some places to eat.
The building on the right above is a bank, we think, but the building has this plaque, commemorating the Celtic settlement that was here from 500 BC to about 150 AD.
We walked back to the river to see how the buildings look in the evening light and watched this lady and her dog for a while. German is full of dogs, mostly well-behaved ones.
Then we took some nice photos of the Altstadt in the evening light.
We wandered home, then got on our bikes for a short ride through town and over the bridge to investigate another new street and found another bike shop (closed on Sunday, of course).
It was a nice quiet day.
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