Feeling Blue: Day 26 - Reidlingen to Ulm - Get It While It Lasts... A Big Loop Through Europe 2017

September 2, 2017

Feeling Blue: Day 26 - Reidlingen to Ulm

Pretty much everyone has heard The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. It's a beautiful piece of music and it was probably a marketing ploy to name it. The reality is that The Brown Danube Waltz wouldn't have been as popular, even though that's a better description of what we've seen.

Today we had some pretty interesting sights along the way. We were still in a fairly narrow valley with the same limestone karsts and cliffs. However as we were no longer in a nature reserve, there were more towns and industry. Cement to be exact. No surprise given the amount to limestone around!

We did come across two quote interesting 'natural' sites though. First was the Hohle Fels Caves, one of the largest in Germany and the place where the oldest human artwork, a flute like instrument dating from the stone age, was found.

The second place was the Blautopf, a large (largest in Germany) natural spring with very clear, and very blue water. This is the source of the Blau river that flows into the Danube. Unfortunately, even after this clear and beautiful water hits the Danube, it's still brown.

Our hop-scotch game with the Kiwi's continued today and we met up in Ehingen, a small town reputed to have the best beer in Germany (by the locals at least). We didn't put this to the test but we did see some pretty cool fountains and had our requisite cake and coffee (the cool weather is making this the desired form of rest stop).

We pulled into Ulm around 5 and were a little surprised to see that most of the buildings were quite modern. Ulm is the home to the tallest cathedral in the world (construction started in the 1300's and didn't finish until the 1800's) and it dominates the city centre. However it turns out that about 80% of the medieval city was destroyed by bombing in WWII.

The current city is actually a pretty cool mix of old and new. We've booked into a hotel and have decided to take a rest day and check it out more thoroughly tomorrow.

After we got cleaned up and laundry done, we strolled into the 'old' city (and were really surprised by how much the Danube had risen over the day!) and found a really good Tapas place for dinner. A great local beer to cleanse the palate, several plates of tasty food and a great bottle of Spanish red led to a great sleep!

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Song of the day ;

What else....

The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss II .... I know were not in Vienna yet, but what the hell.