Well it was an alright day, nothing terribly exciting, but a few neat surprises abound. It started with a trip to the “Klusfelsen” (Klus cliffs) and the “Kluskapelle” (Klus chapel) which is a large and unique 110 million year old rock formation, and at the top, a small chapel was carved in 1167 with a little bridge to it.

Next was the Goslar Zwinger, back in town. I haven’t really been able to find out a good translation for Zwinger, as the city of Dresden’s Zwinger is a beautiful palace, but Goslar’s Zwinger, is little more than an old stone tower, which is now a museum full of medieval artifacts. It’s a very hands on museum, complete with swords, shields, pieces of armor, and a massive and insanely heavy full chain mail shirt made the medieval way, old caplock rifles you can hold (probably newer replicas), old medieval shackles, and punishment/shame masks you can put on etc…

Then it was off to the Kaiserpfalz (Imperial Palace) of Goslar, and residence of the imperial family, today it is a museum, though it has changed much and has been heavily renovated. One end is the the attached Chapel of of St. Ulrich, which is little more than a tomb for Ulrich III… or at least his heart. Though the great hall is pretty incredible.

Then was a bit more of a walk around the old town and market place… with a very… interesting statue on a restaurant/hotel from around 1494 in the square. Nearby is the “Large Holy Cross” a former hospital run by monks in the middle ages, is now a shopping plaza, for handmade decor items, and in the main building is a row of teeny tiny rooms, with teeny tiny doors each with a craftsman in their teeny tiny shop making goods, whether it was jewelry or clothing or wood carving, glass making etc…

After that was was a long trip west and up hill, a steep hike up the rocky hills west of Goslar through a beautiful forest to get to the top for the “Steinberg Turm” (Stonerock Tower)… bit of redundancy in that name I think. It’s a neat tower that sits at the tip of the hill overlooking Goslar, built in 1888. Annoyingly, there’s a bunch of really tall trees that almost completely obscure the view of Goslar, but you can see the neighborhoods outside the old town, and the hills and other surrounding landscape.