Travel 2020

Disclaimer:  All voyages in this blog are being taken safely in the comfort of our imaginations - based on our plans and intentions for travel in 2020. What is reality after all?  We finally arrived home in Melbourne safely this morning at around 6 am! It took us a while to get here from Frankfurt , with the flights leaving late on Tuesday evening and heading off on the long hauls into the sun across a full day and two nights. Tuesday started with a late check-out from our lovely accommodation at Bad Berka and a farewell to our hosts who have become friends. It's about a three hour drive to Frankfurt , slowed down even more by the inevitable summer roadworks and a lunch stop at an anonymous roadside pizza restaurant in somewhere called  Romrod : The first stop when we arrived in  Frankfurt was to drop Garry and Lawrie off at their accommodation, as they weren't flying out until the next morning: From there, it was a short drive to the R...

Disclaimer:  All voyages in this blog are being taken safely in the comfort of our imaginations - based on our plans and intentions for travel in 2020. What is reality after all?  Last visits please! There's a real sense now of seeing the final things in the area before we fly out tomorrow and end this voyage of discovery.  So it's off on a slightly longer drive (a little over an hour) to see another nearby castle/ schloss .  We headed west from Bad Berka , and eventually came off the #4 highway and bypassed the very quiet town of Eisenach : We followed the signs to Wartburg , which loomed above us on the ridge as we drove in: This was apparently the first of Germany's UNESCO World Heritage listed sites.  We stopped at the parking lot, and declined the offer of the 'traditional' donkey ride up to the castle: choosing rather to walk up from and through the small village: The castle loomed over us as we huffed and pu...

Disclaimer:  All voyages in this blog are being taken safely in the comfort of our imaginations - based on our plans and intentions for travel in 2020. What is reality after all?  This weekend was the culmination of our 2020 travels (to be): the Rudolstadt Festival .  This was their 30th anniversary festival, which started in its present form in 1991 (though it took over from an eastern bloc song and dance festival that had been running since the 1950s). We had been there on two previous occasions, in 2015 and in 2018 - and enjoyed returning again. Previously, the weather had either been very hot (2015) or raining(2018) - but this year it was in the low 20s and fine and a very pleasant place to be. The Festival takes over the whole town of Rudolstadt , with around 27 stages in the park, in the schloss on the hill: where there are two main stages, as well as smaller more intimate venues:   There are more stages in the medieval main town, including i...