Thursday 26th September
I’m trying to work out how we keep finding such great towns and cities. Today we arrived in Landshut, never heard of it before but it is a little gem. I’ve looked at the map and noticed that most of the places we’ve been to on this trip have been marked with a yellow box. I took that to mean it was a navigation point and that town would be shown on signposts so if you were travelling from one place to another you would just look out for some place on the signs and follow the until you saw the next sign with another town you needed to pass through or around. Not sure i explained that as well as I could have, hey ho.
It turns out, after studying my map that it means there is a place of interest there. Essex has three places of interest, Colchester, Clacton and Southend on Sea but I can’t recommend visiting any of those places. Places of interest in Germany are slightly different.
We are parked in a very huge car park on the edge of the River Isar. For the princely sum of €1 we are allowed to stay here for 24 hours, our view is of St Martinskirche. Today marks one of the first days that I haven’t been forced into actually going into a church, it might be really lovely inside, if you want to find out you’ll need to visit.
Also form the parking area we can see Burg Trausnitz high over the city.
We entered the town through the Landtor, a medieval gate tower from the 15th century.
And found the main street. This is a small view of it, nearly a mile long with what look to us, Dutch buildings either side.
The town hall is rather ornate.
Which country are we in? You can see in some of the photos that the weather was looking rather threatening, luckily we didn’t have to take shelter in a bar to escape the rain.
Every building was unique.
And some were exquisitely decorated.
There was nothing left to do but to make the long climb to the castle. Lucy is slowly realising, over the years, that all good castles are at the top of steep mountains.
The inner courtyard to Burg Trausnitz. Founded in 1204 by the Wittelsbachs it was home to the dukes of Lower Bavaria for 250 years. It then became the court of the hereditary ruler of Bavaria.
We arrived 30 minutes before the hourly guided tour started so went and had a look around the museum. Some of the stuff was amazing, above is a 17th century Japanese box.
And this is a large mother of pearl plate from the same time and place.
And all of a sudden it was time for our tour. There are only three of us on the tour plus Micheal, our guide. Unfortunately for us, Micheal speaks a completely different dialect of German than what I does. We spent a good 20 minutes smiling and nodding while the other tourist was laughing her head off every time he spoke.
St George and the Dragon seem to be a very popular theme in Bavaria, we spotted him a couple of times in Nuremburg and Regensburg.
The view from the top was lovely and the rain held off.
Eventually Lucy needed a toilet break and we had to put up with a pint of Dunkel and one of Wheat Beer, and then one of Helles as well.
Great post as always. Looks like Lucy likes the same colour beer as me. Keep them coming.
It seems that St George became popular as a warrior saint during the time of the Crusades but he had no special identity as a patron saint of England during the Middle Ages. Apparently he is reported to have been serving as a Roman soldier although he was of Greek origins. He was sentenced to death for refusing to recant his Christian faith.
From Wikipedia: The tradition of loyalty to the patron saint of chivalry, Saint George, was long established in Germany, and various Bavarian Princes who in the fifteenth century had made pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulcher and were there invested as knights had each made a promise to Saint George.
Got another question for you today!
Looks like your having a great time enjoy
Great beer tour
Cheers