Our drive from Freyburg to Kronach allowed us to visit the Goltzsch Viaduct, the largest brick built bridge in the world. This impressive structure carries the Nurnberg to Leipzig railway across the valley at a height of 78m. The bridge itself, built mainly of bricks, is 574m long, took 5 years to build and was completed 1851.

We arrived into Kronach at around 13.30 on Monday afternoon, hopefully this would allow us to have a light lunch and also give us a chance to see the place before checking into our hotel. First impressions, as we drove in, were pretty positive. It seemed a place of narrow cobbled streets, timber framed buildings, and all of this overlooked by a huge fortress on the hill, the Festung Rosenberg.

We tried a café/bakery, but seemed to get short service, especially as they were not serving anything on the menu. We gave the place a wide berth after that, but given the time had almost reached 14.00 the opportunity for food was looking rather difficult. Germany, like some other parts of Europe, seem to have Mondays as a bit of a semi-closed day, so we ended up at the City-Treff kebab/grill for a late lunch. The service was very friendly, it was a very clean place and the kebabs were huge.

Given we had pretty much walked around the place looking for a lunch we soon headed to our hotel, the JUFA, that is located in the fortress overlooking the town. Whilst the setting was fabulous - you don't stop in a castle/fortress every day - the IKEA like furniture, and the fact that we got allocated a disabled friendly family room didn't quite work for us. It was nice to have all of the extra space, but it didn't feel very cosy.

We wandered into town to find somewhere for dinner and, for the second time on this trip, ended up at an Indian restaurant. The Ganesha provided good quality and gut filling food with reasonable prices as well.

On Tuesday morning we drove to Coburg, a city that has links with the UK as Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband came from the city. Prince Albert stood proudly in the main square surrounded by some fabulous buildings. There was also a Coburg sausage (wurst) stand in the square. This enabled me to try these delicious pork products that are cooked over flaming pine cones adding an interesting taste to them. It was a great sausage, although in typical Germanic style the bread roll is really just a means to grip the sausage.

We finished our time in Coburg off by walking through the Hofgarten to the Teste Coburg, a castle/fortress overlooking the town. The park was a nice place to wander and keep our step count up.

Prior to returning to Kronach we called in at Vierzehnheiligen (or the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers), which has a rather magnificent catholic basilica that is [apparently] world renowned. We had never heard of it, but having been advised by Chris Rowley that it was on his 'bucket list', it seemed appropriate to beat him to it given it was just a 20 minute drive from Coburg. Sorry Chris.

Our final evening in Kronach saw us dining at La Qualatia, an Italian restaurant in town. This was a nice place and the food/service was very good and seemed popular with the locals as well.

We have just one more stop on this German trip, and that will see us in Heppenheim for two nights before flying home to the UK.

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