Day 1 Nov 11 + 12, 2023

Atlanta -> Nuremberg

This was a long day, taking a flight at 6 PM from Atlanta to Heathrow, landing around 8 AM, taking a flight to Frankfurt, driving to Nuremberg, and going on a History/Food Tour.

The flights were fairly uneventful, though I was worried that I might not have time, but going through passport control only took 10 minutes and luggage took another 20 minutes. 

Because I had bought a business class ticket from London to Frankfurt, I was able to use the Lufthansa Lounge at Heathrow.  Since I had almost 2 hours to kill, this was fantastic.  They had fed us well on the flight from Atlanta, so I just had a small breakfast and a ton of coffees.

The flight to Frankfurt was great, but the bags took about 40 minutes to appear.  I finally got to the car rental place and there was a huge line.  All the other car companies had short lines or no wait at all.  The reason is exactly why I went with EuropCar.  Their price was 60% of the others.

The only blight on the trip was the drive to Nuremberg.  There was about 100 km (60 miles) of construction, where we had to slow to 80 km (50 miles) per hour.  Compare this to the up to 180 km per hour I was going earlier.  This construction added an hour to the drive and I made it to Nuremberg by 5:30 PM.  I checked in and started getting ready for my 6:30 tour when my room phone rang at 6 and someone asked if I had expected a tour guide.  Apparently, the guide did not get the memo that I had changed the time from 5:30 to 6:30.  She had actually watched me checking in at the counter.

Justina was my tour guide and she was great.  Nuremberg was an independent, wealthy, and strong city, up until about 1800, when it became part of Bavaria (capital Munich.)  It didn't become part of Germany until about 1890.  It was also where a lot of the imperial council (the Holy Roman Empire) hung out, so it was a city with an important significant and cultural history, which is one reason Hitler picked it.  It was going to be the jewel of his empire (the Third Reich.)

Unfortunately, I didn't take a pic of the food - it was mainly sausages and beer and bread and lebkuchen (ginger bread.)  To tell you the truth, this was a very underwhelming food tour, though the history information was great.