It was the end of the month and we were going to lose another free night at a Marriott, so we got on the computer and found a hotel in the direction Bob needed to travel Sunday night. We ended up in Karlsruhe, Germany. The weather has been rather gloomy here and it continued through the weekend. We were 2 hours south of Cologne, but it was definitely colder. The elevation is much higher as you travel south so it tends to be much colder.
Karlsruhe is south of Frankfort and a city of about 250,000 people. There were lots of young people around as it is a big university town as well. We found much more English spoken there too - menus in English, some signs in English which struck us odd.
Did walk all around the city which is laid out in spokes coming out from the Karlsruhe Palace which at one time was a hunting lodge surrounded by woods. It is a massive building that now houses a museum which we walked through without any English translations. It was cold out and our options were few. We wondered around trying to interpret what we were seeing. There was quite an extensive collection of things from 2,000 years BC! Amazing really.
In the evening we ran into this ice skating rink set up across the street from a beautiful building which housed a museum for children about nature and animals. The rink was constructed for November - January and was up for one more day. When we passed it there were lots of children and adults skating. The little white huts were tents set up - one for borrowing or putting on skates, the others for getting warm with wine (warm), hot chocolate, etc. The set up was a bit magical with the lights being stars lit up in the trees. We wondered back after we had a late dinner and our camera. At that point there was just a machine cleaning the ice. The amazing part to us there was no charge (even for the skates!).
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