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The second of my three trips to Germany this year, all with
Art
Pursuits, and all with the same tour leader and manager, and some
repeat trippers too. Thursday 1st October Met Graham the AP representative at Heathrow Terminal 2, and after swift check-in and security process meet David and Jenny for banana and cinnamon porridge. The flight was a Lufthansa to Munich. We landed on time but due to the ongoing passport shenanigans our meeting with Uli timed for 2.30 dragged on until 3.45. So our coach didn't leave the airport until 4.00, and we didn’t get to the Hotel Goliath am Dom in Regensburg until 5:30, where Stefanie the tour manager was waiting to help settle us in. At 6:30 we met up in the hotel lobby for an introductory city stroll, taking in a chunk of the surviving Roman city gate and the medieval bridge across the Danube, which then took us over to the Restaurant Spitalgarten. I had Obatzda, a cheese thing (see photo), cheese Spaetzle, and Kaiserschmarrn for afters. Friday 2nd October  We began the morning with a visit to the gothic Cathedral of St Peter, with its special sculpture and mind-boggling masses of stained glass and its restored cloister with an 11th/12th century chapel for which Uli had the key. An independent lunch for which a visit to the historic riverside sausage restaurant was arranged. A breakaway group went to one of the bakeries flanking our hotel and had fine brie and rocket rolls and coffee and cake. Reunited we walked to the Scottish Benedictine Abbey of St James to visit the church and cloister (the latter by arrangement). An independent evening, so I made for the MacDonald's in the railway station, which involved a walk into New territory. The mall in the hauptbanhof was certainly real, and busy with Regensburg youth exploring their hotmones. The McPlant wasn't on the menu, but there was a McVeggie, which turned out to be a lightly-spicy faux chicken burger, which was fine, but not the mixed-veg burger as advertised. Saturday 3rd October Today was a 'special  access' day characterised by Uli opening doors with bunches
of keys. Some gruesome relic stories too. Firstly the abbey of St Emmeram, which
has three medieval crypts (That's me left in the ring crypt) and a cloister featuring fresco fragments, cushion
capitals and an impressive but newish Mausoleum. Lunch nearby was, for me, cheesy dumplings and a weissbier Then, armed with more keys, Uli unlocked the Dominican church of St Blaise with its baroque coverings of a medieval original, another cloister, with a chapel, needing more keys. Tonight was a group dinner at Restaurant Bischofshof. For me a salad for starter and a coconutty Thai curry. Sunday 4th October  This morning a coach took us to the town of Straubing. The Basilica of St Peter is a Romanesque church not half as impressive as its wonderful cemetery. The churchyard also has three chapels, really churches. One is the Kapelle Unserer Lieben Frau (Chapel of Our Dear Lady), which is covered inside in 18th c? frescoes which cover a high wall which stretches down a stairwell into an ossuary (see right). We then coached across Straubing to the market square for lunch - a salad with honey-baked goat's cheese with some dark beer for me. Replete, we strolled to the Gäubodenmuseum to appreciate a hoard of roman stuff. Then our coach took us from Straubing to Donaustauf and the hilltop temple of the Walhalla, a replica of the Parthenon in Greece, which is a huge pantheon inside. Another free evening. Stefanie took some of us to an Italian, the Trattoria Sorano. I had a Buffala pizza with onion, then vanilla gelato and lemon sorbet. The pizza just about passed muster, the service not so much. Monday 5th October After a fair amount of non-medieval content yesterday today we continued off piste with a day of baroque churches. Before visiting the first one two boats took us along a stretch of the Danube gorge, the narrowest section of the Bavarian Danube. We had been supposed to take a larger riverboat but they haven't been able to ply the waters this summer due to the Danube here being at its lowest level ever, for the longest time ever. Our circular cruise took us back to the Benedictine monastery of Weltenburg, the work of the Asam brothers and so a taste-boggling experience.  We had lunch at the Klosterschenke here too. Platters of cut meats and cheese,
with a plate of just cheese untainted for me. Locally-brewed dark beer too, and
a dense but very edible apple strudel. After lunch we coached on to the village of Rohr, and another Asam church, of the Blessed Assumption of the Virgin Mary, with its spectacular and theatrical altar of the Assumption by Egid Quirin Asam. We had an independent evening which I spent doing a little light (redbush tea) shopping, watching camera review videos, and taking a shower. Tuesday 6th October Another day where Uli came equipped with keys. Firstly, with a key ring with a small teddy bear on it, we descended into the small subterranean, and somewhat plain, 10th-century chapel of St Erhard. The nearby Niedermünster church, which also needed unlocking, not only houses St Erhard’s tomb but (more keys) we got to explore the considerable archaeological excavations underneath the church. The morning ended with a visit to the History Museum which is housed in the former Minorite monastery of St Salvator and its impressive deconsecrated church. The rooms contained various medieval items of interest, mostly sculpture, but stained glass too, and works by Albrecht Altdorfer, but we didn't get to see any of his famously racy fresco fragments as those rooms were amongst the many that were closed. Lunch with David and Jenny was back at our fave bakery from day one, and it did not disappoint. Our final group dinner was at the Restaurant Orphée. The onion soup was good, the ratatouille improved by it cheese topping, and the deconstructed pavlova v palatable Wednesday 7th October An earlyish check out and coach to Landshut and Trausnitz Castle. A bit of a trudge uphill, as you’d expect with a castle, was rewarded with some fine wall paintings and a very special chapel with a couple of good altarpieces. Some fine views too, including the church of St Martin with it’s instantly favourite tall tower (see left). A visit to this church preceded lunch – a hummus and couscous pannino with a weissbier. The coach then took us to Munich airport. Check in was a bit of a faff – I even had to get help from a member of staff and the check-in again involved being told we had to register t a machine again, but we ignored the chap telling us this and followed the instructions of the chap telling us to just pass through to one of the available desks, of which there were many. All went smooth thereafter. |
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