Germany - Nurnberg

Our next day we headed to the wonderful Nurnberg!  I loved it there!

We first saw the St. Lorenz kirche, which was just beautiful.

Nurnberg's city wall is surrouned by all these magnificent towers!  We first saw the Spittlerturm tower.  

As we were walking around we saw this really cool building.  We walked up to it, and determined that it is the police station!

I love the door, and they use these awesome old fashioned keys - awesome!

 We saw this really interesting sculpture outside of the city's art museum.  Couldn't read the caption, obviously, but thought it was really interesting!

We then walked to the edge of town where we saw the St. Elizabeth's Kirche and also the St. James' kirche

Just next to these churches was the Weisser Turm tower, which I thought looked really cool and next to it was the Marriage Merry-Go-Round fountain.  

Needless to say - it was very - um - interesting!  

While we were walking around the edge of town, we totally wandered into the red light district!  Ahh!!  Seriously, it was like family centered one street, and then right next door...yikes!

We headed back in towards the center of town and checked out the Church of Our Lady - Frauen kirche

 

The gorgeous fountain in the middle of the plaza - rightly named, "A Beautiful Fountain."

We headed into a little tourist shop just next to the Beautiful Fountain.  Kenneth found this awesome hat.  I'm really sad now that we didn't buy it!  He looks adorable in it. :)



Another fun fountain we saw:

Next we saw the St. Sebalds Kirche.  It was a beautiful church which was bombed during WWII.  They had amazing photos after it was destroyed and during the rebuilding process and also a poem about the healing of the church and the community.

Next we walked to the edge of town to see the Kaiserberg Imperial Gardens.  This was the old palace of Nurnberg.

The large tower of the castle - with the well at the bottom.

I love the rock here.  I think it is absolutely beautiful!

The view from the Kaiserberg Castle

Kaiserberg Gardens

Next we headed to the town center and took a tour of the Medieval Dungeons.

The blacksmith shop of the dungeon

The fabulous bathrooms

The torture room - here Kenneth is with the rack...

...and the thumb screws

The stocks where 3 men would be lined up next to each other - on their knees - with one hole in the middle for all the excrement....nasty!

The incredibly short hallways

The rooms - Kenneth is standing next to one of the beds

The table where prisoners would have their last meals before being executed

Shackles and torture devices - they were crazy heavy!

Next we walked by the beautiful Pignitz River

 The old city wall:

Before we left we got ice cream!  I had the most amazing boca (hazelnut and chocolate) flavor and Kenneth had an amazing dark chocolate!  YUM!

Next we drove to the infamous Courthouse 600 of Nurnberg where the Nurenberg Trials took place for the Nazi war criminals after WWII.  It was amazing to be able to go there.  It was such a crazy feeling knowing I was standing were some of the most evil men in history were.  The cross was not in the courtroom at the time of the trials and they had to add several additional desks and rows for the accused to sit on.  The courtroom is still used today and you can only go inside on the weekends.  We were lucky to have come when we did!

Outside of the Nurnberg Courthouse

I absolutely love Germany because anywhere we went we found the greatest sites.  We took a different way home at the end of this day, and in yet another small town we saw this:

I love that there is a huge hole in the middle of the rock supporting the castle.  It is awesome.

While we were walking to this spot to take a picture, we saw 2 local Germans talking and started talking to them.  One was an older gentlemen who spoke very good English, and the second was a man in his late 40s who spoke broken English...and who was VERY drunk!  They were so funny to talk to.  They told us we couldn't go up to the castle itself except for the 1st Sunday of the month, but they said it was for sale!  Only 1 million euro - I actually thought it would be a lot more!  They were such funny guys and asked us if we climb (because no body really comes out to that area except to climb) and the older guy used to climb back in the day.  Go figure!

Another view from just outside of the town

 Back in the town where we were staying we found this guy hanging out in front of his house in his lederhosen.  I love that it isn't just like some old traditional clothing, but that they still wear it everyday.  We even saw people farming in their lederhosen at one time.  Makes me smile.  :)

There was also a really fun house that was covered in license plates.  The front of the house is covered as well.  We took a picture, and then hurried away - the lady walked out right afterwards...I guess they don't get many people who want to take pictures in front of their house...

And that is the end of our fun day in Nurnberg!