Esslingen

Well I finally have a computer that is working so that I can update on the last few weeks that we were in Germany.  Well way back in March my family came to visit for two weeks from the 10th to the 23rd.  I am going to post in different posts and I am starting with what we did on the 11th.

So on the 11th of March we went to Esslingen which is a 1000 year old city.  Mostly we went to see the castle up on the hill (they called it a Burg).  I also think that it was used as a fortress but it wasn't called that (a fortress is called a Festung).  We also walked around the city a little as saw the old part of the city and we were able to see 3 of the 4 gates that used to lead into the city when it had a city wall.  Here are some pictures:

 This was one of the old city gates.

This was one of the churches in the city.  One of the unique things about this church is that the two towers you see are different.  They are not the same and you would normally expect.

This is the clock that they would call a Glockenspiel because it has chimes and figures that go around kind of like a cukcoo clock.

 Here is the view from the walk up the hill to the castle.

 This is just a picture of the date on the keystone as you walk into the grounds.  The following are pictures of the grounds inside the walls.

View from the top.

Another view of the wall.

This was a cannon that was there on the grounds and my sister and I are pretending that we are going to shoot it off.  I am "pushing" the cannonball.

At lunch we fed the pidgeons and this brown one was the only one who was brave enough to eat the bread out of my sisters hand.

This was a turtle in the park so I got on top and we got a picture sitting on the turtle.

This was another of the city towers.

Here is another tower.  There were four but we only saw three of them.

Here is another picture of the church I mentioned before and you can see a little better that the sister towers are different.

I "rode" this bike, but it didn't go anywhere.  I thought it was funny that they would have a metal bike rack shaped like what you would attach to the rack.