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Alas, it's time to part ways with the tour group. Most of the group left earlier this morning, and we've bummed a ride to the airport in the van with the second-to-last group: Alan and Terri and their riding buddy Bill. Donna drives the van while Graham heckles ;-)
Goodbye! Donna, Brian and Graham pose with Myrtle (the van) while Paige tries to figure out where we need to go to pick up our rental car.
It looks like this is the time to tell you about how wonderful the tour was and that the people (both tour-guides and other tour participants) were fun. Our hats are off to Beach's: they put together an EXCEPTIONAL two-week experience for us, and we really appreciated the effort that must have gone into arranging the hotels, motorcycles, and the tour book that kept us finding wonderful places to adventure during the tour. The other tour participants were great fun to get to know for a few weeks, and we formed a few friendships that we'll endeavor to maintain for years to come!
We picked up the rental car and got on the road. We decided to sign up just Paige and David as drivers, since we weren't sure how Brian's injured ankle would like holding down an accelerator pedal, or stomping on the brakes. It was a warm day, and the car didn't have air conditioning, so we drove from Frankfurt to Ulm (a bit over an hour's drive) with the windows rolled down. We got checked into our hotel early, then headed into town for some lunch.
After lunch we returned Brian to the hotel so he could rest his foot, then Paige and David headed into Ulm to see the sights. Instead of heading toward the church that towered around the corner from our parking spot, we head toward the section of the old wall that once surrounded the city, along the bank of the Donau (Danube) river. Here's Paige posing on the wall. Over her right shoulder you can see the "Leaning Tower of Ulm", but you can also see that it's under construction so we didn't get to go inside (it has a good view of the church.)
From the wall we strolled up to the plaza near the old town hall (Rathaus). Too bad we didn't find this area for lunch, there's easy parking and you can see the outdoor eating in the lower left of the picture. You can also see the church spire peeking out behind the Rathaus. I think there's a fountain behind Paige, but I can't remember for sure. Actually, we came back here for dinner with Brian and ate inside at the restaurant whose canopied tables you see here, which was good because there was a 15 minute downpour about halfway through dinner that scattered the crowd of people who were there earlier.
Our primary goal for the day: the Ulmer Munster church. This picture is of the sundial on the corner of the building.
And this picture is of the famous spire: tallest church spire of it's kind in the world. We paid 4DM each to climb this monster, which was well worth it, though quite tiring!
The path up and down is via these very narrow spiral staircases. The pedestrian traffic is 2-way and squeezing by someone coming the other direction is definitely a squeeze. David's method was when coming down to stop and hug the central "railing" and let the people climbing up pass on the outside. This picture is taken on a straight traverse from one spiral staircase to another.
The Belfry
View of the church roof and the smaller spire at the other end of the church from the first level.
And this shows the central spiral staircase that goes from the first level up to the very top. Paige wasn't sure she wanted to climb all the way to the top: it was very dizzying and very narrow, and very HIGH, and our legs were getting tired. I wasn't going to miss it, and she decided she shouldn't either, so we took it slow and easy and climbed all the way up.
Here's the view from the very top... the right-hand of the smaller spires is under construction.
From the top: a view toward our hotel, which is the dark glass monstrosity in the middle of the picture on the river's bank.
I went ahead a bit and had time to snap this picture of Paige coming down before the next person behind her caught up.
Of course there were lots of Gargoyle rainspouts!
Here's a picture looking up the main spire from the level below it.
Afterwards we went into the sanctuary. David felt this was the most beautiful sanctuary we went into during the whole trip, including Notre Dame. Part of the reason is that it was fairly light, while, for instance, Notre Dame was extremely dark.
This little chart summarizes the climb we just performed... 768 steps up, 768 steps down. David's calves were tied in knots for several days afterwards.
As I mentioned, we headed back to the Rathaus area for dinner, and some good ice cream for desert. Brian hobbled with us over to the plaza in front of the church before dinner so he at least got to see it in person!
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