I’m blogging about my 60th Birthday Trip to Germany last June. Now I’m up to my last full day in Germany, which was Thursday, June 20.
As every day, I started out with a delicious breakfast at Waldhotel Heller. Then that day I decided there was some shopping I wanted to do before I left, so I headed for downtown Kaiserslautern and the Fußgängerzone. (Basically that means – foot-walker zone or, yeah, Pedestrian zone.) The grand bookstore Gondrom wasn’t there any more, but there was another bookstore in the same place.
I took a few pictures in Kaiserslautern:
The name of this shop made me laugh:
I did make a couple of great finds at the bookstore. Die Seufzende Wendeltreppe is the German translation of The Screaming Staircase and is absolutely perfect for Sonderling Sunday. The Ebbes game is a fairly simple card game, but it’s got a Pfälzisch translation and includes a map of the Pfalz – so it’s a perfect local souvenir.
After that, alas! The amazing bakery in Enkenbach where I used to go with my German coworker Elfriede with any excuse at all, but particularly on my birthdays – that bakery is no longer open. But I had been craving Erdbeerküchen (fresh strawberry cake) on every birthday since I left Germany, so I wasn’t about to leave without getting some. The second most legendary bakery from our time in Germany was Cafe Goldinger in Landstuhl – so after shopping, I headed there for lunch and finally got myself a slice of Erdbeerküchen.
Okay, once that was done, I’d checked off the places I simply had to revisit for nostalgia’s sake. So how would I spend my last afternoon in Germany? Why, visit a new castle, of course. I’d decided to head south, in the Pfälzerwald near my hotel, and headed for Madenburg.
Once again, it took some ignoring GPS. I actually asked a German about parking, and got good advice to drive a little further. It was still quite a hike up to the castle, but I like hiking, so it’s all a win. Once there, another castle to roam around with a great view.
The view from a German castle is always wonderful! (Rather than moated castles, they’re pretty much always built on hilltops. At least in the Pfalz.)
This picture shows perfectly what I mean when I say I spent a lot of time driving through hilly curving forest roads.
And there was a castle restaurant!
The salad I ordered was delicious and filling. (I was tired after the hike up to this castle – it was over a mile.)
Then more roaming around:
Then it was back for my last night of Balcony Reading at Waldhotel Heller, and the prettiest sunset yet to send me off.
