Monday June 10th

Today was a grey day, and we expected a few showers.  We headed out to breakfast which was in a separate building, and it was the usual spread of food.  I managed to swipe a bread roll, although I could have made a sandwich there and thought I should have done as breakfast here was costing us 7.50 each per day, I would have liked to have got my money's worth!

Anyway, After looking at the Celtic Museum we discovered it was closed on Mondays.  So we went out to Maulbronn Monastary and it was still quite grey.  On our way into the complex, we saw a shop which looked quite interesting, but guess what?  It was closed.  I think we were lucky that the Monastary was open, even thought it had scaffolding all over part of it.....#storyofourlives but we're used to that!  Still, as a UNESCO World Heritage site, I would have thought the gift shop would have been open as the site was, especially as it looked much better than any of the other gift shops associated with tourist attractions we have been in so far.

We decided on an audio guide which wasn't extortionate as they usually are, and it guided us around the Monastery rather nicely.  The buildings inside were also very nice, some being used as caves and restaurants which were, as it happened, OPEN.  When we had finished our tour around the Monastary, we noticed it was raining steadily outside, half rain half drizzle.  We took our audio guides back to the reception and popped upstairs into the museum, but it was a shame there was no English translation for any of it because it looked rather interesting.  Afterwards, we went back outside where it was tipping it down outside at this point, and we went into one of the restaurants called Kloister Kats.  I had tomato soup which was very nice and hit the spot, whilst Mathew had a huge salad which came smothered in some sort of dressing.  After paying, it was still tipping it down outside, so we went back to the car and had a look at the numerous leaflets which we had picked up at the beginning of our audio guide tour.

We decided on Bruchsal Schloss and made our way there in the rain.  By the time we arrived there, I had dried off and put my waterproof trousers on.  As we approached the Schloss, it wasn't looking too optimistic, and after consulting the board on the gatehouse / arch, we had discovered that it was open on Mondays but only on Bank Holidays.  So yes, it too was closed.  We made our way back to the hotel feeling cheated out of a days worth of exploration as it turns out in Germany, pretty much every tourist destination is closed on Mondays.

That evening we scouted out the restaurants properly and ended up going for Italian, yet again!  Well the majority of open restaurants that evening were Italian anyway.  I had a very nice roast beef salad and Mathew had some pasta with cheese and ham.  It filled our bellies nicely and we returned to the hotel satisfied, and continued to make use of the only DVD player we have had on this holiday so far in our hotel room!