Ulm on the Way Home

Our drive home day presented a few options and we chose to visit Ulm, the birthplace of Albert Einstein!!  We only had a few hours so we followed a walking tour in one of our books and discovered a beautiful city!

Red dog statue

The Ulm Münster is the 2nd largest Gothic church in Germany as has the tallest spire in the world.  It was started in 1377 but the steeple wasn't finished until 1890.  You can climb to the top on it's 768 stairs which we didn't do but I saw a picture of the inside and I'd love to do it sometime either without kids or when they're older.  The spire is open with lace work and supposedly on really clear days you can see the Swiss Alps.

This cathedral turned out to be one of our favorites ever.  It was gorgeous all through it but also some of it's details where magnificent and things that we hadn't seen before.  I loved this statue - the statues are usually religious figures and I don't think I've seen one this loving with teaching a child (which is how I interpreted it).

 My second favorite things about this place was the organ with the window framing the stained glass window on the outside.  Gorgeous!  Chopper loved how light and bright it was in the cathedral.  So many of them are really dark.

And then in the choir stalls they had amazing carvings.  Men on one side and women on the other.  I read that real women posed for these carvings in the 15th century.

Megan's favorite window

The kids were also wowed by this replica of the Münster made out of 112,000 legos.  Legoland is apparently about 20 minutes away which means that we'll be back in Ulm sometime . . . 

After the Münster, we walked down through the medieval fisherman's quarter.  Ulm is right on the Danube and the fisherman's quarter is full of canals and creeks and half-timbered houses.

That tower is Ulm's very own leaning tower.  I guess we don't need to go to Pisa!

The Danube

 The Rathaus.  Actually it was pretty badly damaged in the war.  It's wonderful to see that some many things have been restored and that history is preserved but it's also neat to see in cities how modern buildings have come in to replace ruined ones.  I think it's part of what gives Europe it's charm -- the eclectic mix of old and new.

We walked up to St. George's church because we saw a picture of it that looked fantastic.

Then we let the kids play at a park for a bit and got some early dinner and went on home.  We had a really good day!