Esslingen Arrival and Wandering Without the Children

The train ride to Esslingen was not too hard on us. We left the charming train station and a three-block walk brought us to our hotel, Hotel Am Schelztor. The staff were friendly and courteous. When we asked about a place to do some laundry, they offered to do it for us. We had a full set of clean clothes the next morning. How awesome is that?

Another awesome thing about this hotel is its location: right next to all the excitement in town. The first exciting thing we discovered was some poor fellow out on a limb:

Lookout below! Also, the is the schelztor which the hotel is am too.

As you may have guessed, this fellow is just some cut out put up there to impress the visitors. We never did find out his story. As you may not have guessed, the bottom of this tower is home to a fabulous ice cream shop where Lucy insisted on being a repeat customer. The first time we went, I ordered the creme de menthe and we bought Lucy a vanilla cone. She quickly traded with me after she had a taste of mine. But that was later, after dinner.

The children were napping when we first arrived, so Angie went to explore while I stayed with the snoozing children. She came back after an hour or so and switched off duty. She gave me a town guide and a little pamphlet for the main church in town.

The main church is the Stadtkirche St. Dionnysius, dating back to the 700s, though the current structure is much more recent, i.e. the 1200s. The north tower was built in 1275 and the south tower in 1310. They had to build the bridge between the two for stability purposes. Alas, we could not climb the towers or go across the bridges, though having seen it from the outside, the bridge might be scary even if it doesn't look so from the inside.

Inside the church are several interesting features. There's the old-style pulpit circa 1600 and the ultra new lectern built in 1990 featuring the four evangelists on the front.

The early pulpit

Matthew (man), Mark (lion), Luke (ox), John (eagle)

The stained glass windows are pretty amazing, reaching high up into the tower and depicting far too many things to list on the blog. There was a table with a list of everything depicted. And the windows date back to the 1300s.

Lots and lots of stories are recorded here

Lists of what's in each window, the reading glasses are a nice touch

They also had a pretty fancy tabernacle, though no Eucharist since it is a Protestant church.

The tabernacle is almost as tall as the windows!

Across the square is the Munster of St. Paul, an old Dominican monastery that now functions as a regular Catholic church.

It was built in the 1200s and consecrated by none other than Albertus Magnus, the Doctor of the Church known as Albert the Great and the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas! He is modestly remembered by a small statue inside the church:

So great he could be modest

I thought the baptismal font was nice too, again with the four evangelists looking on:

And Jesus too!

After this church, I decided to head back to the hotel so we could get some dinner. More on that in the next post!