We started the day with one of our travel staples which is to eat at and chuckle at the differences in McDonald’s.

We got several items to go but my favorite was my scrambled eggs and bacon bowl. Kinda wish we had that here. My meal also came with this sort of flat bread ham and cheese sandwich which was tasty enough just didn’t quite look like the picture. The McDonald’s here all use the touch screen ordering system and are minimally staffed.

We hopped on our train to Nuremberg where we will stay tonight. One interesting thing on trains is you get time to sit back and enjoy the scenery. On this stretch e saw lots of rolling farmland including several hop farms.

After a train change we arrived in Nuremberg and emerged from the station to see the gate tower and part of the medieval city wall.

After a walk down a cobbled street (fun with luggage!) We arrived at our hotel and couldn’t check in so we left our luggage and took the team out to the Kongresshalle and Zeppelin field which are part of the Nazi history of Nuremberg. Kongresshalle was begun in the years leading up to the war and was meant to be the central headquarters of the Nazi party and also a huge stadium like rally ground for Hitler’s speeches. They even planned a partially retractable roof. This place is huge and likely my pictures won’t do it justice but it was never finished as construction stopped when the war effort began.

We then walked around the lake to the Zeppelin field which you might recognize from old film of Hitler’s speeches and Nazi rallies where he is speaking from a large concrete rostrum.

After taking this in we had a wonderful lunch at Guttmans Bierhall (thanks Becky!) before heading back to old town to check into the hotel. I noticed that we had a chance to see the Christkindl if we left the hotel for our city walk right away so we headed right out. We saw several beautiful old churches and went through one which had many beautiful altars and artwork.

The Christkindl is a teenage girl who serves for two years as the symbol of Christmas and wears an angel like costume with gold wings. We got to see her give a speech and give out presents to children before moving on up toward the castle.

We saw most of the old town and walked up most of the hill to the imperial castle. It started to rain and it was a nice cold rain which quickly became a bit miserable.

We went through a section of town known for it’s half timbered buildings then decided we were wet enough and headed back to the hotel to rest and warm up before dinner and Christmas market shopping. After resting we walked back through old town and up the castle hill to the Altstadthof Brewhaus and ate dinner in this small but very cool restaurant and both had beer themed meals and a beer and radler for me.

We then walked back through the Christmas market and did more looking and I has a hot chocolate in das boot and Becky had a hot apple/rum drink.

We have been collecting the different mugs from each city as they give you a real mug for a deposit then you can get a refill or trade it in later for a refund. This keeps them from having a ton of waste cups and if you don’t mind forfeiting your deposit gives you a cool souvenir for a few euros. Cool system I thought. We closed down the Christmas market and headed back to the hotel to sleep and plan for tomorrow.