Meersburg

Meersburg is a small town on the shores of the Bodensee, also known as Lake Constance. It's a beautiful and quaint little lakeside town, and our hotel was right next to the coast. After we got settled in our little room, we walked along between the lake and the many restaurants there, trying to decide what to eat. We finally settled on a little pizza place which was attached to our hotel, the Hotel Seehoff, which was cheap and perfectly located, by the way. Well, we ordered a salami and pepperoni pizza, but when they brought it to us there was no pepperoni at all, just thick cut salami and these long green peppers. That is how we discovered that in Germany, those peppers were pepperoni, and as far as I can tell they don't have what we know as pepperoni in America.

In the morning, we both woke up about 4am, because we were still getting used to the German time zone. So we got up and walked out on a little concrete barrier and watched it get lighter in Switzerland, and Austria, which also border the lake. Then we took a little walk around the town, as the shops began to open, though there were no tourists about. Finally we returned to our hotel for a standard German hotel breakfast. It consisted of rolls, meat, cheese, coffee, tea, orange juice, cereal, and fruit. After we had eaten we climbed stairs though the trees, up to the second level road, where the Altes Schloss Meersburg (old meersburg castle) was located. This castle is an old (628 a.d.) defensive castle, made of heavy stone, with thick walls. It has lots of medieval style armor, weapons, and furniture. It also has a couple of neat features. There is a rookery for the falcons, there was a tunnel that was once dug down to the lake to sneak supplies in during a siege, which was latter converted to a "put 'em there and leave them" dungeon, and in the towers, there are pieces of the floor which lift up to reveal the stairs downward. I assume this is also defensive, but really have no idea. It's very much a medieval, Camelot style castle, and the fee to get in was only a few Euros, if I remember right. After we had explored the castle, we took the long way back down to our car, along the sunny cobbled street. We bought an ice cream cone, and got back to our car, ready for the next part of our trip. The town is adorable, and the castle's very nice, and has a different feel than many of the other castles we visited here, and though there are some towns which draw more tourism along the coast of the Bodensee, this one has all you could want, with maybe a few less people. I would give this place an A