An hour long walk nice and early…at 10am south east of the Reichsparteitagsgelände, have fun with that one. (The Nazi Party Rally Grounds) a huge 11 square km area tasked to top Nazi architect Albert Speer by Hitler to be developed into a huge rally ground and celebratory area for massive parties and demonstrations. With the exception of some bunkers, rubble, relics and the like, these structures are the last remaining buildings of Nazi architecture anywhere. The main center has been turned into a museum on the rise of Hitler and the story and creation of the rally grounds. It is a large brick and stone horse shoe shaped building which was never comlpleted due to the war, and then there is the grand podium in the zepplin landing fields where Hitler would give his famous speeches to up to 200,000 people at a time. Though this was intentionally heavily dismantled due to ‘safety concerns’. It was really fascinating walking through. Google ‘nazi party rally nuremberg’ for stunning photos of the place when it was full.

A long walk back took me to the medieval cemetery of St. Rochus for victims of the plague created in the 1500’s, it is full of very very old tombstones, though it now has many ‘fresh occupants’ as well. Did some more walking through the old town down the only original medieval street that survived the bombings. Virtually all the rest of the old town was destroyed, including many of the stone walls and towers in my pictures, though they were rebuilt using the same stones. Next in line was a real medieval prison built under the town hall but it was closed. So really next was a visit through the Kaiserburg, Nürnberg’s famous castle on a hill. Built sometime in the 11th or 12th century (nobody knows) this castle housed many kings of Bavaria. It was never captured due to its defensive capabilities. Fortunately some of the castle remained entirely intact after the war, including the ‘Sinwell Turm’ the large rounded tower high above everything else. It has a neato armory with armor and weapons where photographs are allowed yay! There was also a well dug 260 feet deep that the old villagers were not allowed to know it existed. Our guide dropped water and lowered candles to see just to see how far down into the rock it is. Pretty damn far.

It also rained today. Very very heavily. All we have to do is move California here for a few days and the lakes and rivers will run full again.