Misterpiggy visits Europe: June 2016

Day Two: Wurzburg Residence and Hopfgarten

Wurzburg - Part One

The tour bus left the airport at 9 am approx and it was close to a two hour drive to Wurzburg to visit the Wurzburg residence. It was registered as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in 1981. It's a grand palace and undergoing a lot of restoration.

The 45 minute interior tour of the Wurzburg residence gave you some history into the building, who built it, how it was used and how it was destroyed during World War II and subsequently rebuilt. Most stunning was the arched ceiling of the main foyer with it's huge painted mural. Statues protruded from the four corners to give a 3D effect. The subsequent tour of the rooms displayed the excesses of the time, each room getting more gaudier than the next. Lots of mirrors, pink marble and stucco resembling marble was used. Oh and lots of original chandeliers, each worth over a million dollars each.

Unfortunately, nobody is allowed to take pictures inside. So all backpacks, cameras and such had to be put into storage before proceeding with the tour. If the curators of the building saw you snapping pics with your cellphone, they would run after you to tell you to stop.

Oops, cellphone camera accidentally took a picture of one of the chamber ceilings. See how there's almost a 3D effect via the use of stucco to imitate drapery?

After the interior tour, there was about an hour given to explore the residence grounds and vast gardens, which wasn't a lot of time at all. There are lots of statues around the perimeter of the palace.

The residence hopfgarten (court gardens).

Could have spent another couple of hours here in the pretty garden, but the tour guide said it was time to walk to the Marketplatz.

Reference: http://www.wuerzburg.de/en/visitors/must-sees/22688.UNESCO-World-Cultural-Heritage-Site-Residence-Palace.html

Day One: Flying to Frankfurt

Flying to Frankfurt

Fri Jun 10 to Sat Jun 11

The airplane was about 20 minutes late departing YYZ as it waited for passengers with connecting flights to arrive. It was a full flight. Seats 53F and 53G were in the centre aisle, the two right hand seats of a row of four. They had adequate legroom, but not much space under the forward seat for stashing bags and such. As with all flights of this duration, much of the overhead luggage compartments filled up quickly, so if you came late your carry on ended up somewhere else on the plane.

Chicken with risotto? was the main meal, with a small salad and chocolate cake for dessert. Saved the little bottles of complimentary wine for a later date. Second meal consisted of a slice of banana bread and a beverage. Won't bore you with airplane food pics.

The flight itself was mostly uneventful. No major turbulence, no luggage popping out of overhead bins, no flying food, no crying babies, so all good. Only problem was getting addicted to the Sudoku and Word puzzle games on the new entertainment system. The gist of the word puzzle game is, they give you six letters and you have to spell as many words as possible within two minutes. They show you the placeholders for all of the 3, 4, 5 and 6 letter word combos and you have to guess them all.
Never won a single game! Here you try ... BGOROE, this was one of the puzzles.

Upon arrival at FRA Frankfurt, it was warm, cloudy and slightly humid. The big tour bus had just enough room for everybody with four empty seats to spare. Got assigned to the very back of the bus for the remainder of the day and felt kind of barfy for most of the day because of it.

This will be one of those rare blog posts with no pictures, sorry about that. Now, on with the tour!