Wuerzburg had been on our list to see for a while. We had driven by the town on numerous trips down to Munich. We even stopped for dinner once on our drive back from Rothenburg with my mom and sister.
We left Friday night close to Sabine’s bedtime so she slept the entire way down to Wuerzburg. We stayed at Hotel Alter Kranen (Old Crane) which was a nice family run hotel that had the advantage of providing a free breakfast and had available parking. It was located along the River Main (pronounced like “mine”) and was named after the old crane that was located next to the river. The crane was originally constructed to lift large crates of Franconian wines onto boats and was human powered. The friendly lady at breakfast told us how the men would power the crane like hamsters on a wheel. She seemed to take great pleasure in comparing the men to hamsters - some marital discord perhaps?
First on our agenda was the Residenz Palace. It was billed as the Franconian Versailles. We had hoped to complete the tour while Sabine slept but the Residenz didn’t allow strollers. We decided that waking a sleeping baby to go into a museum was a bad idea so we decided to return when she woke up and catch the 3:00 English tour.
In the meantime, we stopped for some cappuccinos and did some shopping. Every time Jim and I shop together, he has the best luck finding things whereas I seem to have some really bad shopping mojo when I’m with him. This trip he found two really great jackets that were both on sale and my lone purchase of the trip was a box of tampons.
Our next stop was the old bridge to check out the views of the Marienberg Fortress on the hill across the river from Wuerzburg. The Fortress was the original home of the Prince-Bishops before they moved into town and began living in the Residenz.
We noticed that there was a nice restaurant in a converted mill on the bridge called Alte Mainmühle. We made a reservation for lunch and took Sabine back to the hotel to give her some freedom from the stroller for about 40 minutes before we had to be back at the restaurant.
Lunch was very good. I can definitely recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Wuerzberg. It would be a great place to have lunch in the summer as they have a deck overlooking the river and the Marienberg Fortress. Sabine did pretty well at the restaurant and she seemed to really enjoy my whitefish with lentils and balsamic reduction (too much actually, I didn’t like having to share so much of my delicious lunch).
After lunch we headed back to the Residenz for our tour. Thankfully the museum had strollers that you could use in place of your stroller so we weren’t forced to try to hold a wriggling 14 month old while walking through the Residenz.
According to the tour the palace is famous for two reasons. First it contains the largest fresco in Europe. It was painted by Giovanni Tiepolo so the Residenz is a popular tourist stop for Italians. They are generally not too happy that he happened to paint his largest fresco in Wuerzberg and not in Italy somewhere. He apparently finished the fresco in record time, allegedly because he thought it was too cold, dark and gray in Germany and wanted to get back to his sun-kissed homeland.
The second reason that the Residenz is well known is the fact that it was the first building that Johann Balthasar Neumann ever built. He was actually never trained as an architect but it was his hobby. His work was criticized by other architects who claimed that his domes would never last. However, the domed sections of the building were the only ones to survive the WWII bombs and the remainder of the Residenz had to be reconstructed. The cost of one of the more elaborate rooms was 3 million euro.
Unfortunately, they didn't allow pictures so I didn't get any good photos of the Residenz. Wikipedia has a few pictures of the Residenz if you are interested to see what it looks like.
After our tour we wandered around the gardens and then went in search of wine. If we were going to have to be back in the hotel room at Sabine’s bedtime, we figured we might as well enjoy a bottle of wine in our hotel bed while watching a DVD on our computer.
We found a great little winebar/ shop right on the old bridge cleverly called Main Wein (pronounced Mine Vine in German) after the Main River. We sampled a few red wines while Sabine slept and bought a few Franconian reds to take with us.
We didn't want to press our luck after having a nice lunch so for dinner we were looking for something fast. We stumbled across a Pakistani place that had a buffet and decided that would be our best option. Like her father, Sabine is a big fan of tandoori chicken.
Although we had planned to drink wine and watch a DVD in the room, by the time we got Sabine to bed we were tired ourselves so we just went to bed extremely early.
The next morning was quite foggy and a bit rainy. We went out for a coffee to see if it would clear up before we headed up to the Marienburg fortress. We considered walking up to the fortress but fast way up had stairs. The meandering route through the vinyards was a 3 hour round trip and would have been nice on a beautiful day but the weather was cold and drizzly.
We decided to check out the area around the University and look for a restaurant for lunch. As it was Sunday, all the shops were closed and the area around the University was quite dead. We ended up finding a great playground for Sabine to play on for a while before lunch.
We had a relaxing lunch at a little Italian place where the Italian waiters and other guests all fawned over Sabine before driving up to the Marienberg Fortress.
The Fortress has been converted into two separate museums. We simply walked around the fortress and took in the great views of Wuerzberg while Sabine ran around tiring herself out before the 2 hour drive back home.
Wuerzberg was a great little town. Of course we found ourselves saying that it would be so much prettier in the summer. Why is it that we always take these small trips during the dead of winter?
I think the Residenz was the highlight of the city for both Jim and me but Sabine was more excited by the shower in the hotel room. Her favorite game was climbing into the shower and being separated from us by the glass shower doors.
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