Greatest This, Greatest That

There is the “Champs Elysées” in Paris, “Threadneedle Street” in London, “Unter den Linden” in Berlin, “Via Del Corso” in Rome, and a thousand more, but the street name that really stuck in our mind was “Grand Parade” in Cork, Ireland.

Twenty-one miles west of Bamberg, Germany, we found the Cistercian (Benedictine) Abbey, founded in the 1100s in the town of Ebrach. Construction on this exquisite, beautiful place of worship was started on July 4, 1200, and we can’t imagine anything more beautiful has been built since.

We don’t tour many castles, but the massive Châteaux du Haut-Koenigsbourg, situated at the top of a cone-shaped hill in the Alsace of France not far from Selestat, is too imposing to resist. Most Châteaux in France are large stately mansions, Haut-Koenigsbourg really looks like a castle.

Half-timbered and stone buildings; magnificent churches; interesting roof patterns created with multi-colored tiles; bridges over streams and small rivers; castle ruins; courtyards covered with flowers; clean, clean stone streets; and storks making love in especially constructed nests high above the town. The French Alsace — miles and miles of dozens of the most beautiful, picturesque little villages one can imagine.

The Salt Cathedral, Blessed Kinga Chapel, carved in salt in the mine at Wieliczka, Poland, really was a surprise. The many works of art include a bas-relief of the “Last Supper,” and the chandeliers consist of dangling salt crystals.

From the Buda side of the Danube River we scrutinized the Parliament Building in Budapest, Hungary, the most attractive, stately government building we have seen in Europe.

At the Plitvica National Park (near Zagreb, Yugoslavia) sixteen lakes are connected by thousands of little, hundreds of medium, and dozens of large waterfalls. And the Norwegian fjord coast, with inlets and bays bordered by steep cliffs, ranks with the most beautiful scenery we have seen.

The Parthenon in Athens, the Castle in Heidelberg, the Coliseum in Rome, the city of Ephesus in Turkey, and Hadrian’s wall in England could not be any more exciting, even if they were restored to their original beauty.

Each magnificent old ruin is exceptional in its own way.