Safely Back on the Road, we Explore two More Burgs - Coburg and Bamberg, with no Idea of the Unforeseen Circumstances Around the Next Corner.

Note: This blog post was completed a day before we received the news about our beloved Fitzy. It has been edited slightly and retitled.

After our near miss in Coburg, we were back on the road and back on track with our sightseeing, albeit a little shaken. With lovely warm weather, we enjoyed our days in Coburg and Bamberg, both charming Bavarian towns with lovely architecture, delicious Bavarian food, and plenty of refreshing gelato shops. Little did we know that the incident with the car would seem incidental a few days later when we received the devastating news from home.

In Coburg, we visited all three palaces associated with the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Prince Albert's family homes). Veste Coburg is the main palace and was the most grand. Next, we visited Schloss Ehrenburg, which we enjoyed, but would have enjoyed more if the entire guided tour (which you had to take to enter the palace at all) had not been in German! They gave us notebooks in English to follow along, but with only a paragraph per room for us follow along, it was clear we were missing a lot of detail. The tour guide spent ten-plus minutes in each palace room explaining things at length, while we were done with our reading in less than sixty seconds. We were the only non-German speakers on the tour, so we felt a bit left out. I secretly snuck a few photos (photos were prohibited for some unknown reason), when our tour guide wasn't looking, which made me feel a little better. Our last stop of the day, before driving to Bamberg to spend the night, was Schloss Rosenau, the simplest of the three palaces, but with the one with loveliest and most expansive grounds, which we enjoyed exploring.

Bamburg was another low-key, charming, and walkable Bavarian town. There were all the requisite sights you would expect: a regal palace; half-timbered Bavarian buildings; a historic bridge crossing over a rambling river; delicious bratwurst sandwiches, sauerbraten with dumplings, and wiener schnitzel; delectable morning pastries; some of the most delicious gelato we've had in Europe (with the exception of Lagos, Portugal and Florence, Italy); and charm galore.

I wish we could turn back time to Bamburg. Fitzy was still with us and our famiy was intact, albeit across continents.