Taking the Scenic Route

The light wasn’t great and we didn’t walk a long ways. We noticed a market much closer to our hotel and wanted to check that out. It wasn’t as nice as the other one, but had what we needed. (milk for coffee). The food here doesn’t have nearly the preservatives or processing that it seems to in the US, which means it all tastes better, but spoils a lot faster. One dh’s coworkers warned him about that and we noticed our milk was already going sour yesterday. Even a typical household has a “dorm size” refrigerator because they go shopping every day for food. The markets mostly have hand baskets rather than the big carts I am used to seeing too. (they have some smaller carts, and the big market had the kid car carts, but the basket attached to it was about 1/3rd the size of ours) They also don’t bag your purchases, and you are expected to bring your own market basket of shopping bag. (We purchased some shopping bags a few days ago so I didn’t have to try and jam everything into my purse. lol)

Now I understand some of the Haba toys better. Some of the play food was a little odd to me, but I see now what they are taking after. They also have market baskets which just seemed like a neat novelty item to me before, but now I realize it is how they live here.

Along the way, we noticed this door on the building next to the hotel. 

 
Saw this in a window.  Now, I would have taken a picture of it even if I didn’t know the story because who the heck displays a cat with an arrow through it.  lol.  Yesterday, however, the staff at the hotel told us the story behind it, so we could enjoy understanding why there is a cat with an arrow through it. 

Apparently, hundreds of years ago, during a war, the soldiers thought they saw somebody  in the window of the castle, so they shot an arrow into the window.  It wasn’t the person, it was a cat.  They earned the reputaion as “cat killers” and the incident had become so well known that there was eventually a festival honoring the event.

Here are a few shots of the hotel.  On the right is the patio/parking lot we parked on when we first came here.  The door with the brick step and the fountain in front of it is the door we went into.  We did discover there is an actual “front desk”, but it is through another door.  (the one in between the restaurant and bar, instead of the one between the bar and the breakfast room)  On this photo, you can see the 3 windows to the bar/pub on the left building, and the picture windows to the breakfast area on the right building.

The stoplight on the corner.  You could never have a light like this in America.  The first time somebody had an accident, the city would be sued because the stoplight wasn’t visible enough.

The hotel from around the corner.  The stoplight is far right, unseen (in that patch of ivy you just peek at on the far right side).  The 2 windows to the bar are on the right, and the 3 windows (shown) to the left of the door are to the restaurant.  If you go into that middle door, you pass through the hotel lobby on the way to the restaurant.

A few doors down from the hotel, on the way to our room, is this shop.  This is where we had that pizza, and earlier in the day Zach ordered lunch there (#3) to bring up to the room during his lunch break.  We decided to stop by and get another pizza since the hotel restaurant was closed.  This time we just got ONE pizza. The guy remembered us.