Day 48 (June 20) Castles & Grimma

We checked out of the Panorama Hotel after another fine breakfast and headed for our first castle of the day Schloss Callenberg just outside of Coburg.  Since it was Monday, the museum at the castle was closed so we just hiked up to the castle from the parking lot. We took a few pictures and noted that we could easily see the Veste Coburg, the defensive castle we visited a few days ago.  After returning to our motorcycle, we motored on to the next castle: Veste Heldberg.    It, too, was closed so all we could do was hike up to it and take some exterior pictures. 

It was now time to point the bike towards Grimma, Germany which is a suburb of Leipzig some 260km (150 miles) away.  We have a friend there that we wanted to visit. For the entire day we wandered east and north through some terrific German backroads and more little villages.  One thing that was challenging especially when riding in the former East Germany was that we would come upon road construction that blocked the highway with no apparent sign of a detour route.  I got pretty good at finding detour routes even if they took us down little paved farm roads.  The crowning touch was encountering a blocked road less than a mile from our destination.  We rode through the blockage, miscrits that we are.

We enjoyed a nice dinner with our hostess, and then walked next door to visit the castle Döben which is pretty much in ruins.  Tomorrow we have a special castle visit and tour planned.