Breakfast at 8 am in our hotel was really good – much the same as
the hotel in Austria except that the selection of cheese/meat/bread
was larger and, for the first time, they had scrambled eggs.
A word about hotel keys. In the U.S., we're pretty spoiled by our hotels. Typical amenities that I had previously mentioned like shampoo, conditioner, hair dryers, etc, are the norm but no so much in Europe. Hotel keys were also a little interesting. At our Paris hotel, we were given a key card that literally was a punch card with holes. In Switzerland, our room key was an actual metal key and we actually forgot to lock our door at night because we had to lock it with the key from the inside. In Austria and Germany, we had key cards but there was only 1 card per room and if it was lost, there would be a charge for it. This issue with hotel keys posed a problem at times for the students who were assigned 2-5 per room with only one key.
We had
some free time in the morning until the band concert in the plaza at
2:05 pm. We wandered into a coffee shop and bought some coffee beans to
take home with us.
Seth and Amina got majorly distracted by the
Birkenstocks since there was a 10% discount for OAM and also because
the prices were so much better than the prices available in the US.
3 pairs of Birkenstocks were purchased.
I wandered into a home store
and saw some bags stamped with Route 66 on it - we had been told along the tour that Route 66 was "big" in Europe.
The buildings in
Rothenburg were so colorful and decorated – this one reminded me of
Christmas.
We found the Crime museum and paid the entrance fee to view the
displays on 4 floors. The museum was quite a big bigger than I
originally assumed. What's amazing to me was the amount of time and
energy spent on crafting the various torture and shaming devices on
display and the copious notes and instructions written about using
them. Many of the reasons for using these devices was beyond silly –
gossiping, quarreling, drinking coffee (illegal at the time), and
being a bad musician. We spent about 2 hours in the museum and I thought it was really interesting to see all the displays.
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| shaming device for bad musicians |
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| neck violin for the neck and hands |
We explored a bit looking for someplace to have lunch and the first
few places we checked out were not even open or didn't open until 2
pm which was really odd for a Frida. We settled on an Italian restaurant which turned out to be quite
good and very reasonably priced. Seth and Amina had pizza and I had
the rigatoni al forno (baked pasta with meat sauce) – they were all
really good. We also had an excellent bottle of sangiovese.
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| Seth and Kirby got the Chef pizza |
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| Amina got the Mr Enrich pizza |
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| I had the rigatoni al forno |
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| amina's pizza |
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| excellent bottle of sangiovese - one of the best we had on the trip |
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| my rigatoni |
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| seth's pizza (jalapenos actually = pepperoncini) |
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| Kirby's "spaghetti" ice cream |
After lunch, it was time for the bands to perform in the town market
square (marktplaz) so I positioned myself up on the steps and
recorded the bands with my ipad. I had been told that there was a webcam of the town square so that family at home could watch the concert, but the bands were positioned directly in front of the clock tower which, as it turns out, is where the webcam was so you couldn't really see the band - just the plaza opposite from where the band was playing. Amina went to get a couple of
schneeballens (snowballs) that we had seen everywhere – they were
giant pastry balls coated with various things like chocolate,
powdered sugar, or sprinkles. Someone had told us that they tasted
like pie crust which was a good description except that I really
didn't think they were sweet enough – they were just ok.
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| webcam picture during the band concert - can't quite see the band |
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| jazz band concert |
After
the bands finished playing, it was time for the chorus to head to the
Franziskanerkirche for their final concert of the tour. The church
was nice enough to allow us to go upstairs to take pictures and video
of the concert. We enjoyed their last concert and posed for one last
family picture in the church.
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| Parents taking pictures and video |
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| the end of a whirlwind choir concert tour |
Dinner
was back at the hotel – salad, chicken cordon bleu, french fries,
and ice cream for dessert.
We headed back to our room to do some
packing and then at 9:15 pm, the kids were scheduled to have their
last get together of the tour to do their farewell skits. We
received our final instructions for departure day and then the 5
different colored buses did their farewells which ranged from skits
to songs to poems – all very creative and funny.
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| red bus |
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| green bus |
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| orange bus |
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| brown bus |
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| blue bus |
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