Yes, we're back in Germany for a blog post or two this week as I realised when I looked back at 2015 in photos that I didn't quite finish sharing pictures from our trip to Bavaria last June. Füssen was where we picked up our bikes and headed off on our cycle tour, as well as being our finishing point. It's a pretty town and it was on our second visit - after all the cycling - that we got to see more of it and appreciate its personality.
It nestles at the foot of the Bavarian Alps and I've since learnt is the highest town in Bavaria at over 800m above sea level. As well as being our starting point for the cycle tour, it's also the southern starting point of the Romantische Straße and it's believed that the name Füssen comes from the Latin meaning "supply camp". Interesting because if you remember we cycled along the Via Claudia Augusta cycle route - a route across the Alps which follows an ancient Roman road - on our first day.
As I said, it's a pretty town, look:
Like many of the Bavarian towns we visited it's buildings are painted more imaginatively than ours in the UK.
It's also well set up for cyclists, this was just one of the bike racks I spotted.
HOW PRETTY AND INVITING?
I remember for the second day, the cycling notes said to turn left just before the red church, when we read this the night before we thought it was a bit random and hoped we'd spot the red church, and our turning. The next day we realised we'd have struggled to miss this beautifully decorated church!
THERE WAS NO MISSING THE BEAUTIFUL RED CHURCH...
The blues and the yellows of the buildings above look postcard perfect, and I can't help but wonder if just a little planning went into this street's overall look? Either way, it's stunning.
As we walked around we stopped and admired these in one of the shop windows, and wondered what they were. We soon found out that they were the town's speciality Snowballs. They're sweet and huge - a good handful, although you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of this snowball if anyone threw it. They were pretty solid, and we could see how they got their name when we tried one. It was a mixture of pastry and filling, in layers much the way you'd create a snowball from snow. They weren't really to my taste, but I'm glad we tried one.
SNOWBALLS
The other thing I noticed on our walk around Füssen was the signs hanging above the shops, here's just a small selection:
On Sunday I shared a couple of black and white pictures of the band that set up almost out of nowhere. It was a great end to our stay in Füssen and once we'd finished eating I decided to get some close ups of the band, the tuba player was my target. And then I noticed he was sitting outside a real life fairy door!
And that is, I think a true reflection of this pretty town. Our next stop was Munich, in a few days I'll share what we got up to when we arrived there.
