Bruchsal

I promised you a post about Bruchsal, didn't I?

Well.

Bruchsal is another town close to Bretten, and not quite so small. The people that we met in Karlsruhe were from Bruchsal. We wanted to explore the town, and so we headed out a couple of weekends ago.

We left around mid-morning, and went for a wander.

Sometimes, we go to a new place with a plan. We do our research, find all the tourist spots, make ourselves a list, and strike out.

Other times, we don't. We go, we walk, and we see what we find. Our feet take us places without any real direction, and we get a better feel for a place than we would if we stuck to the tourist spots.

This first day, we just wandered. When we got off of the train, we followed the crowd of people until it thinned to just one or two. We walked through the Saturday market in the town square. We wandered down side streets, looking for something to catch our fancy, to cry out to be explored.

We walked up a long hill, and happened upon a Kindergarten museum.

We weren't in a museum kind of mood, so we didn't go in. But they had a beautiful garden.

Then, we found a church with onion-shaped steeples.

It's too bad it was closed, because the sign said it had an incredible interior.

We wandered some more, and found a park with a bike trail that ran along the river. We didn't take photos, but we stopped there for lunch. We picked Mirabelles from a now-wild tree.

They later became part of the stachelbeeren jelly. Small, sweet. For those of you that know Rainier cherries, these are very similar, except that you replace the cherry flavor with plum.

We stopped at a café, and Branden had an icecream. It's practically a national pastime here, apparently. On a sunny Saturday all the Eiscafes have outdoor tables full of people enjoying elaborate icecream sundaes. I didn't take a picture. Probably because I was jealous.

My non-dairy ice tea was also quite good.

When we'd walked enough, we went back to the train and headed home.

We mentioned our trip to some of our friends, and they were surprised we hadn't gone to the castle. So, when we were close by with them, we stopped in and had a look.

In all our wanderings, we'd somehow missed the palace. A whole little world unto itself.

Or, if you prefer, you can be in the center of it.

(Click and drag in the picture to look around. It's interactive!)

The funny thing is that the entire façade is painted onto a very simple, almost flat exterior wall. No marble necessary. I've never seen this in a castle before.

I guess it saves on decorations.