We had a decent night’s sleep. Up around 6am, we had coffee in the room then got some more to go downstairs before going out for a walk.

Galería is a huge 7 floor department store around the corner from the hotel, and the start of an outdoor mall that’s easily 1/2 a mile long. I took this photo this morning because I thought the statue was interesting. It now also serves the purpose of showing where we had lunch later in the day. 

This is the main square of Allstadt or Old Town. We decided on our walk that we would sign up for a free walking tour which ended up starring here. We learned then that all these buildings were destroyed by the Allies during WW2. They were rebuilt to look like their past but with modern materials and construction techniques.

In the same square with City Hall behind us.

No shortage of cute squares here. This looked very different 3 hours later when everything was open.

It was 46 degrees and since we knew we would be out again later we decided to go back for breakfast.

They had a nice buffet but also encouraged ordering from the menu so we did. French toast and eggs for me, salmon eggs Benedict for Ash. Included in our room rate.

I did some work after breakfast and we met the tour at 10am.

This is St. Bartholomew’s, the church was built in the 1200s and contains a piece of his skull as an important religious relic.

It was heavily restored in the war as you can see above, and was prioritized to be one of the first things rebuilt.

This photo shows the church mostly rebuilt with everything around it – including the square we started in – completely gone.

Andre the tour guide gave us a German history lesson inside St. Paul’s which is now not a church but a community gathering venue. It was the site where representatives from the feudal states of what was then the Holy Roman Empire came together in 1849 to form a unified state. That effort failed. They offered a crown to the King of Prussia at the time, who refused it because it came from a general assembly and not other monarchs. Many variations of Germany followed, but the one first envisioned by that group finally came to fruition in 1990. When Germany unified after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the current constitution was closely modeled by the work of that 1849 assembly.

The childhood home of writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I recognized the name because he authored one of my favorite quotes: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

Another town square, this time honoring Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. He was from Mainz, where we were yesterday. Along with Mainz, Frankfurt and Strasbourg were among a very few cities that really took to book publishing, in particular the bible, which people had never had access to before. This access made them realize the Catholic Church had not been teaching it as written which eventually led to the Protestant uprising (“in protest”).

We were ready for lunch after that but couldn’t decide what we wanted. We thought the Galería we saw earlier was a mall and might have a food court. Turns out it’s a single store but with a restaurant on the seventh floor that might as well be a food court.

On the tour we learned about “frankfurter green” which is a sauce made typically from a crème fraîche or yogurt base with seven very specific herbs. So I figured I had to have that, and it was being served with schnitzel. Perfect.

Ash got a veggie and shrimp rice bowl from the Asian counter.

We went back to the room for naps. I took a pretty short one and then worked for a couple of hours. Ash got up about 4 PM. We showered then made our way out for what was going to be another long walk before our 6:30 dinner reservation. 

Best laid plans.

As we were waiting for the elevator, two young guys maybe late 20s enter the area wearing the robes and slippers provided by the hotel. We are on the 25th floor. They were headed to the pool on the 6th.

The doors closed and the floor indicator stayed on 25 for longer than it should have. We realized we weren’t moving. We tried the “open door” button but no dice. Soon the 25 changed to JU, whatever that means, but we imagined it wasn’t good.

Ash called the emergency line and let them know we were stuck.

We were relatively calm. The young guys not so much. One was German and he was loud but mostly coherent. The other guy was Polish and very drunk, very loud, and obnoxiously incoherent. Both very impatient and kept calling to find out what was going on, not satisfied with “we are working on it.”

This was our state for the next almost 90 minutes. I hardly said a word the whole time, Ash not much more other than asking these two how they thought yelling was going to help the situation.

Thankfully the doors finally opened and, sure enough, we were still on the 25th floor as I suspected. Their monitors were telling them we were on 14 so they went there first, baffled to find an empty shaft when they got the doors open.

The woman who got us out was very gracious. I thought the German guy was going to pass out in relief when he almost fell into the hallway. You would have thought we had been in there for days the way these two reacted.

They were still yelling. We were thanking her for getting us away from them.

She comped both nights and parking fees – so we are getting a completely free stay out of it. We are pretty sure they didn’t get the same offer.

Not a bad ending to a bit of inconvenience, huh?

Most importantly: we were 10 minutes early for our 6:30 reservations.

Ristorante Rustico, about a 10 minute walk away. It looks pretty empty now but it was packed when we left.

We chose to sit inside because of the smokers. Everywhere. I forgot that about Germany.

We got a nice table just inside the door.

Ash always asks the waiter what their favorite dishes are. This one didn’t hesitate as they often do and we pretty much ordered what he suggested. This was the sampler appetizer plate. Calamari, 2 kinds of carpaccio, eggplant and peppers, burrata and tomatoes, shrimp. Pretty good.

Ash had a squid ink pasta with seafood.

I had angel hair with rabbit. Both were simple dishes done well so yuh could really fast every ingredient.

A lava cake with ice cream and cookie crumbs for dessert.

When we checked in yesterday, the hotel had given us coupons for free drinks at the bar. Ash got a peppermint tea, I had a sparkling cider. The waitress took the photo.

Overall, a pretty incredible day. We learned a ton of history (I left A Lot out) which we love, saw some beautiful buildings, got our hotel stay comped for dealing with obnoxious guys while stuck in an elevator for 90 minutes. Not a bad day at the office.

Tomorrow we head to Cologne.