Fulda

We are making our way south towards Frankfurt. We will have a day in Fulda, stay the night and then train it from there to Frankfurt Airport tomorrow morning.

Up early. Off to the station. Very quiet; it is Sunday. 

Overcast today. We have been so lucky with the weather whilst in Leipzig: warm, sunny. Delightful.

Signs spruiking the zoo here in Leipzig. A big attraction apparently.

Train late (!) - 15 minutes. Need to change platforms. Don’t know enough German but MF2 works out the number. Argh. Down stairs with suitcase and back up again. People sneezing, coughing. It’s been like this from the start and I have been accompanied by a cold the entire time we’ve been here. Still got it!!

I have ABSOLUTELY NO REGRETS paying the extra and reserving seats on these trains. Absolutely packed!!! It’s about 2 hours from Leipzig to Fulda.

At Fulda we walk to the hotel and leave our bags, as pre-arranged. Despite it being a grey day, Fulda is a delight. It is much smaller than Leipzig; the population here is 64,000 compared with almost 600,000 in Leipzig.

We start off with a coffee (and cake! of course) in a big square and then walk towards the sound of church bells chiming. The enormous Dom in Fulda appears after we have walked a few streets in the old town but I know it is not open until 1 pm so we turn into the Schloss (castle) gardens which even on a glum day like today are absolutely beautiful. In the early 1700s this was a simple hunting park. But the park was redesigned between 1824 and 1827, into an English-style landscape park, crossed by numerous curved paths based on the Romantic period. We returned here later and watched the locals playing pétanque (boules).

We took a tour of the Schloss itself. Quite fascinating. The Fuldaer Stadtschloss (town castle) was built from 1706 to 1721 as the prince-abbots' residence. There are some magnificent rooms including the grandiose banquet hall.

We walked then to the baroque Dom (cathedral), built from 1704 to 1712. It is magnificent in a very over-the-top way: lots of gilded furnishings, plenty of putti  (figures of infant boys), dramatic statues - gold everywhere.

We needed lunch by now but it was getting quite late - mid-afternoon in fact. But first, I happened to see a sign on a gate: Dahliengarten. Well, a walk up a path and that’s what it was - a dahlia garden! What a delight!

We walked on some more through some lovely streets in the old town and finally settled on place where we had a very passable rosé (Dave a beer) plus some great pizza. It was starting to get quite cold so we enjoyed being inside and having a good break.

It was by now close to 4 p.m., so - fortified by food and rest - we trudged back beyond the Dom and visited the Michaelskirche. This early 9th century church was once the cemetery chapel for the Benedictine monastery around which the town grew. Considered one of the most important early medieval churches in Germany, it's a truly beautiful building, with classic witch's-hat towers, a Carolingian rotunda, an 8th century crypt that pre-dates the church and 11th century paintings on the interior walls. A real delight. Simplicity itself compared to its ornate neighbour, the Dom.

We returned to our hotel through the Schloss gardens and checked into our room. We decided, as lunch had been late, and we have an early start in the morning - plus we could do with a lower calorific intake - to stay in. I made a cuppa tea with my trusty immersion heater and we ate the florentines (yum!) I had bought during the day from the cafe near the Dom.

Walking: 16000 steps (no wonder my feet are tired!)