Another one, so soon? Yep!

See? I told you another one would be coming!

So, my folks took a river cruise in Portugal, and flew out to visit us for a few days. They landed on Friday morning, and we had a pretty full itinerary planned.

Early that afternoon, we drove up to Freudenberg... if your Facebook algorithm shows you European touristy posts, chances are, you've seen posts about this town... considered one of the most picturesque in Europe. 

In 1540 (and again in 1666), the town burned down. To help speed up the reconstruction, all of the houses were rebuilt with the same material, in the same style... so, on the hill overlooking the town, you see a sea of what are called "half timbered" houses. Evidently, from a historic perspective, these types of houses were typically built with logs which are split in half from end to end, with the flat sides facing outwards, and visible from outside. Once you see the pics below, you'll say "Oh, I know what he's talking about!"

See what I mean? Here are some more pics of the town, because I'm a generous, benevolent narrator:

I hate pictures of myself, as we all do. There were way too many selfies of the four of us, but I will share a few of them. Benevolent and generous, remember?

Anyway, a little bit more about Freudenberg. Turns out that Freudenberg has only been a real town since 1969, when 16 (or 17, depending on who's counting!) constituent communities merged together. Two of the constituent communities were first mentioned in writing in 1079, while the first written occurrence of the name "Freudenberg" dates to 1389.

And now we all have about the same amount of information about Freudenberg.

Nothing was open in the town, as it was the Friday before Easter, a national holiday. We parked and walked around for a few minutes, took bunches of pictures.

Next stop, Cologne. We drove straight to the hotel, which is conveniently located right next to the famous cathedral I've written about before.. you'll have to do your own searches on this site to find them, I'm not gonna do EVERYTHING for ya!

We got checked into the hotel, then headed into the downtown area to show my folks around.

First stop, the cathedral... but let me paint a picture for you. When you exit the train station in Cologne, you come out in a little plaza area with the cathedral right in front of you, straight up a big set of stairs. If you don't feel like taking those stairs, you can follow the road to the right, where it circles around the front of the cathedral. Once you take the stairs up you turn right, and circle around the base of the cathedral, but on the level of the cathedral (if that makes sense). Picture the cathedral (from above) like a clock face, with 2 circles around it. If the main entrance to the cathedral is at 12 o'clock, the train station is at 3 o'clock, and the only difference between the inner and outer circles is that to get to the inner circle, you have to climb about 2 or 3 stories worth of stairs. The road (the outer ring) climbs more gradually, with only a couple of stairs.

Well, we climbed up the stairs to get to the level of the cathedral, and found the inner ring closed due to construction. Our two options: go back down the stairs, and use the outer ring to get to the front door, or circle the entire cathedral in the other direction. We chose to circle the cathedral, because I don't know anyone who actually enjoys stairs. If someone says they do, they're lying.

So, we circled all the way around one of the largest churches in the world, and entered the front door. My folks hadn't seen it before, so we took them through as much of the inside as we could. Once everyone had seen their fill, we headed toward the front door (at 12 o'clock, remember?) - to find that they'd closed that door for some reason. Now, they were funneling everyone through the door at 3 o'clock... at the top of the stairs overlooking the train station.

Fine, you win. We'll take the stairs. We walked down the stairs and circled back around to 12 o'clock (on the outer ring) to continue into the town. We had dinner at one of the oldest brauhauses in Cologne, Brauhaus Sion - dating back to 1318. I'm pretty sure I've talked about it in previous posts.

We wandered around the city for a little while, then headed back to the hotel. But first, random pics of Cologne and the cathedral... generous narrator, you say? Oh, behave! 

The little pirate guy lives on the City Hall building, and sticks his tongue out at the statue across the square. The statue across the square is of a guy mooning City Hall. Cologne's a wonderfully weird city.

Next morning, we hit the road, but first, dad asked me about adding a stop to our itinerary since we'd be passing relatively close - sure, no problem!

Next stop, Nürburgring. What's that? This was a new place for us - I'm glad you asked about it!

Nürburg is a tiny town in western Germany, with a population of only 156 people. It's also the site of a famous race track dating back to the 1920s. For 16 weeks each year, car manufacturers from around the world bring their cars to the track and rent time to use it to test their cars, then using their performance around the track as advertising fodder. The rest of the time, the track attracts members of the general public, as you can pay €30 and drive your own car around the track, or rent a car to throw around the track for between €150 and €1500 (depending on whether you want to drive a subcompact or a supercar... or anything in between). You can also pay some money and have a professional driver take you on the track, with a wide price range for that service too, depending on whether you'd like to ride in a car you'd see every day, or a Porsche, Ferrari, or Lamborghini. Evidently, it's quite the Mecca for auto enthusiasts, as the roads around town were full of loud cars with lots of stickers on them proclaiming their favorite aftermarket car parts.

We didn't know what to expect as we approached as it's in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest big city about an hour and a half away. We were quite surprised by the facilities that were in place, with a massive shopping mall area with all kinds of stores and places to buy different tickets for the different activities. The building was big enough that it had a full sized roller coaster running through and around it. It wasn't running that day, so I did some research about it for this post. Honestly, the story surrounding the roller coaster is worth its own paragraph.

The new commercial area opened in 2009, and as part of the improvements, they planned a pneumatically launched roller coaster that would accelerate from 0-135 mph in 2.5 seconds, with the initial launch parallel to the race course (to thematically tie the theme of the coaster to the course itself). During testing, they'd been running all of the systems at a reduced capacity. As they ramped up the power to the launch system, there were two major component failures leading to a series of huge explosions in the pneumatic system, injuring seven people and breaking multiple windows in nearby buildings. After addressing most of the issues (more about that in a moment), they finally were able to open the coaster on October 31st, 2013. Its last day of operation was November 4th, 2013. The big issue that they weren't able to address turned out to be the fact that there was no economical way for the coaster to be run, with operating costs well outpacing the amount of money it brought in. According to the state, it cost around €12 million euros to build. It's still just sitting there gathering dust 13 years later, after being open for all of 4 days.

Boss took a 20 second video while standing outside, you can see cars racing by in the background, and the roller coaster both in the foreground, and as the camera expertly pans to the right, you can see the track disappear into the building. I'm guess there was some kind of opening there to let the trains in, but after 13 years I don't think that door gets lots of use.

We continued on toward Luxembourg City, passing through part of the Moselle Valley, stopping at a flea market in one of the little towns on the river. We also stopped in Trier, as they'd never been. We walked through the cathedral and dad wanted to see Porta Negra, the Black Gate (that I've written about here before... I'm sounding like a broken record, huh?!?). 

Eventually, we found our way to Luxembourg City.

We checked into the hotel and started exploring, looking for someplace to eat. Our hotel was next to the train station, and most of our exploration on previous trips was throughout the old city, so while I had a general idea of the layout, a quick Google pointed us in the right direction. We ended up heading to an area a few blocks away that I'd seen some restaurants in when we'd driven through.

The next morning, mom wasn't feeling well, so she stayed at the hotel, while the boss and I took off to show dad around town. We walked over to the old city and showed him the Gold Lady, and the "Most Beautiful Balcony in Europe," about which I've written extensively in previous blog entries here... that little search icon at the top of the blog is your friend, people!

Afterward, we headed back to the train station where the car was parked, and headed out to the American Cemetery. 

One of two recipients of the Medal of Honor at this cemetery

General Patton actually died in a car accident in Heidelberg about an hour south of Frankfurt. He specifically requested to be buried at the cemetery in Luxembourg with his men.

We did our own thing for dinner that night, dad went out to pick up something for mom to eat, and got something for himself then too.

Mom was feeling better the next day, just in time to pile into the car and head home. One fun thing that happened... there's a big bridge over the Moselle Valley (and river) that we've seen every time we've been there, but this was the first time that our travels have taken us over the bridge. There's an overlook where you can walk around and take pictures... (if you want some bonus points, remember the bridge and overlook when you get to the next blog entry!).

Next stop, home!

The next day, we were planning on all of us heading down to Rothenburg, but the boss had to work the next day, so I took the parents by myself. We wandered around the city, and had lunch in a place I've only walked by - so that was something else new for me!

Some crazy lady we bumped into in Rothenb... oh wait - we brought that crazy lady with us!

I talked a couple of blog entries back (in the entry about Den Bosch) about "snowballs" from Rothenburg, and how I didn't expect that I'd like them very much, as they just looked like a ball of pie dough. This visit to Rothenburg, I picked up a couple of snowballs, and I'm sorry to report that my expectations were met. I picked up a cinnamon-sugar one for dad, and he wasn't very impressed. I got a lemon creme one for myself, and while the icing on the crusty pieces of pie crust wasn't bad, the creme that was piped into the middle of it tasted strongly of some nasty sort of medicine. Neither of the snowballs were finished.

Their final night in Frankfurt, we went to dinner at a local tapas restaurant we've discovered - it's a place that has tapas and steaks. I figured dad could have a steak, and mom could have "funky" food that she normally wouldn't get a chance to have. She still wasn't feeling great, so she didn't eat much, but it was a good meal nonetheless!

Folks flew home the next day - all in all, a successful visit!

Continuing a recent pattern, watch this space for another blog entry shortly!