Sightseeing Commences

The sightseeing phase of our trip was supposed to begin in earnest on Monday. But due to insufficient planning (Cathedrals, and many museums are closed on Mondays) and some navigational difficulties we've gotten off to a slow start. So I had to squeeze some extra time out of my trip to plan the next few days; and unfortunately this means I'm way behind on blogging and I will be very tired tomorrow.

If I am very tired we will cut tomorrow short and try to have dinner with my cousins; and catch up on documenting the trip.

Today Gretchen and I went to a Roman-Irish bath. I thought of it as over a thousand years of leisure research and technology being focused into the art of rinsing off. Most German cities and towns are named in very unimaginative ways. So it's really no surprise then that the German city of Baden-Baden is a place of many hot springs. We went to Friedrichsbad, and for the low price of 31 euro, each, we took a bath. Today being Tuesday, the bathing was mixed, which was nice - we could stay together. The bath consisted of 15 stages:
Shower
Warm Dry Steam
Hot Dry Steam
Soap and Brush Scrub & Massage
Shower
Warm Wet Steam
Hot Wet Steam
Warm Bath
Warm Mineral Soak
Less Warm Mineral Bath
Warm Bath
Cold Water Plunge
Hot Towels
Cream/Lotion Application
Quiet Rest

We actually missed the quiet rest thing, we didn't see that stage untill the place was about to close, but that's not a big deal. We liked the steam and mineral baths so much that after our cold water plunge we jumped back to the warm wet steam and started over from there. All in all it was a two and a half hour bath! I highly recommend this if you are in Germany and aren't too squeamish about being naked around a bunch of bathers. For those of you who like to gamble I should mention that there is an amazing casino in Baden-Baden as well, along with tons of black forest hiking trails and such. I could easilly spend a few weeks just in Baden-Baden.