Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz that sits on an island between the river and the 'canal' in Augsburg. It costs €8 per day to stay here. Water and electricity are available at extra cost. (Exact location: 48.36937, 10.87757)
Weather: Mainly overcast and feeling cool (around 20 degrees).
There was to be no gas inspection at Der Freistaat for Bertie - not unless we wanted to return in September, as they're booked out until then. Pity the chap Mick spoke to on Saturday had no inkling of how busy they were, as it would probably have tipped the balance to us leaving yesterday.
Onwards to Augsburg we came, opting to make the journey in one go, rather than breaking it at two other places I had noted as possibly being worth a visit en-route. The reviews for the Stellplatz in Augsburg weren't great, mainly due to complaints of noise, both from the road that runs in front and the river that runs behind. I can understand complaints about traffic, but to whom is the white noise of water offensive?!
Happily, we got a spot backing onto the river, as far away from the road as possible, so I think we'll find our stay here to be fine.
Bertie's back end and the river
A quick lunch was swiftly followed by the 20-minute walk into the city, where we started in the main square, where sits the Rathaus (and, conveniently, the tourist office). There are claims that the Rathaus (built in the early 1600s, largely rebuilt following WWII) is the most significant secular Renaissance building north of the Alps. It is a large and imposing building, but after all of the ornate town halls we've seen, this one wasn't awfully striking from outside:
Our tour then took on a 'churches and fountains' theme, as Augsburg is well stocked with both, interspersed with a few other buildings of note. The most interesting of the churches (we visited 4 and bypassed at least one) was St Moritz, which (like much of Augsburg) was reduced to a shell in 1944, subsequently rebuilt and is now notable for having a very plain bright white interior:
There were photos on display of how the interior looked pre-war (traditional) and post-war (just the walls left), before it was rebuilt.
St Ulrich's (which houses both a catholic church in the huge section and a protestant church in the smaller annex) and the cathedral were far more traditional in their interiors.
Looking up Maximillianstrasse - the most visibly interesting street we came across, lined with grand townhouses - to St Ulrich's
The cathedral
One of the three monumental fountains dating from the 1600s...
...but my 'fountain of the day' award goes to this more simple one sited outside the Cathedral.
It felt like we'd done a reasonable job on seeing the main sights, but looking again at the map just now I see that there are a couple of things (other than museums, which we intentionally omitted) that we missed.
Back at Bertie we found that all of our close neighbours had left. Score! One of them had left over 4kWh of electricity.
Weather: Mainly overcast and feeling cool (around 20 degrees).
There was to be no gas inspection at Der Freistaat for Bertie - not unless we wanted to return in September, as they're booked out until then. Pity the chap Mick spoke to on Saturday had no inkling of how busy they were, as it would probably have tipped the balance to us leaving yesterday.
Onwards to Augsburg we came, opting to make the journey in one go, rather than breaking it at two other places I had noted as possibly being worth a visit en-route. The reviews for the Stellplatz in Augsburg weren't great, mainly due to complaints of noise, both from the road that runs in front and the river that runs behind. I can understand complaints about traffic, but to whom is the white noise of water offensive?!
Happily, we got a spot backing onto the river, as far away from the road as possible, so I think we'll find our stay here to be fine.
A quick lunch was swiftly followed by the 20-minute walk into the city, where we started in the main square, where sits the Rathaus (and, conveniently, the tourist office). There are claims that the Rathaus (built in the early 1600s, largely rebuilt following WWII) is the most significant secular Renaissance building north of the Alps. It is a large and imposing building, but after all of the ornate town halls we've seen, this one wasn't awfully striking from outside:
Our tour then took on a 'churches and fountains' theme, as Augsburg is well stocked with both, interspersed with a few other buildings of note. The most interesting of the churches (we visited 4 and bypassed at least one) was St Moritz, which (like much of Augsburg) was reduced to a shell in 1944, subsequently rebuilt and is now notable for having a very plain bright white interior:
St Ulrich's (which houses both a catholic church in the huge section and a protestant church in the smaller annex) and the cathedral were far more traditional in their interiors.
It felt like we'd done a reasonable job on seeing the main sights, but looking again at the map just now I see that there are a couple of things (other than museums, which we intentionally omitted) that we missed.
Back at Bertie we found that all of our close neighbours had left. Score! One of them had left over 4kWh of electricity.
There must be some way your famous ingenuity can be used to take even more advantage of that free electricity? Do you have what you would call a comfortable mileage for one day's travelling when you move from place to place?
ReplyDeleteMy current view on the leftover electricity is that to maximise convenience, it's best used for charging things. The fridge is the biggest consumer of power we have, but it makes no difference to our convenience whether it runs on gas or electricity. Thus, unless someone has left a big lot of credit on the meter, I'll tell the fridge to run only on gas and will reserve the electricity for being able to plug stuff in to charge - that way we can plug in up to ten things at a time, whereas we're limited to two when we use 12v (I would fit more 12v sockets if I could just identify somewhere sensible to put them!). If there's still credit on the meter when we're ready to leave then we'll boil kettles to fill flasks for use later in the day - another great convenience.
DeleteDistance per day: when we toured Norway in 2017, we covered lots of ground and stayed somewhere different almost every night. At the end of that trip, we felt like we'd spent too much time driving and not enough time in each place. Since then we've gone completely in the opposite direction: once we've arrived in the area we've decided to visit, we generally drive very small distances per day and stay in each place two or three nights. This trip has seen the daily mileages creep back up. It's not unusual for us to only travel 5 or 10km (or sometimes even less). The travel to and from home is different - we're prepared to drive long days then, with the only requirement being to leave enough time at the beginning or end of the day for a bit of exercise (slaves to our daily step counts as we are).