Last time I told you that we don't have much time to go away during the weekends and that we spend most of our free time working on the house. Even though it is true we spent yet another weekend away. It was planned for almost a year, and we couldn't back out anymore. And I'm happy that we couldn't as we had an amazing time. We went to a Czechoslovak ball in Gossau where we spent a great night with our friends and many people from our homeland. And you know what? I won the best dressed lady award! I will show you some photos when we'll get the professional ones as those from our phones are of poor quality.
However, this post is not going to be about the Saturday night. I will take you with us on a trip that we did on Sunday. Every year after the ball we visit a place that is nearby the location. We take the chance to do something nice instead of driving directly back home. This time we chose a small, but extremely charming town called Arbon. And you know what? There is a castle too!
Let's start!
Arbon is located on the lake Constance, about 20 minutes drive from St. Gallen. Lake Constance shore is full of picturesque little towns and Arbon is not an exception. You can walk around the old town in less than 30 minutes, but each house is so interesting that it feels like you've seen so much more.
The surroundings of the town are rich in archaeological findings and today we know that the first inhabitants came to Arbon around 8000 years ago and started a small settlement. Over many and many centuries, the settlement changed to a village and later in the 13th century it got it's town rights. Even though the industry was blooming, Arbon remained in the shadows of bigger cities, such as St. Gallen or Constance. This is how much you can learn from a museum visit! But I'll take you there next time.
I must say that our walk was not really organized. We walked from one street to another and admired many impressive buildings with some of them dating back to the 16th century.
In many cities some of the older buildings are replaced by new ones which simply doesn't look good. It seems like Arbon was built over centuries and its medieval and baroque parts are almost untouched. Most of the houses are residential as well and I again wondered how much those people pay for the utilities with no facade insulation 😊
As many other places o the lake there is a long fishing tradition in Arbon. It is displayed in the paintings on the facades and also in the form of a fountain that you can see on the Fischmarktplatz. It is a shell-shaped fountain with a bronze statue of a woman with a fish on her head - not the strangest fountain that I have ever seen.
As part of Arbon's city fortifications, the town hall is 700 years old. It is the seat of The Arbon District Court since 1803. It used to be a bakery or a Catholic school in the past. The house was partly destroyed after fire exactly 30 years ago, and renovated to its former glory.
If you come here in summer, make sure to go to this wooden house where you can buy your tickets for the guided tour of Arbon. We're not lucky with the tours this year as it seems that wherever we come we always find something closed or not available during the winter months. We keep saying that we have to come back in summer, but if we really came back everywhere where we said we would, we would probably not spend a day at home during a couple of months 😊
Storchenplatz is one of the busiest squares in Arbon - as you can see not when we visited. It's the place with weekly farmers market being visited by people from the entire region. It's a small market, but even though there is a potential to put more and more stands, the organizers keep the amount limited so that it stays special.
It's also the place with many restaurants, all of them closed during our visit, and I was getting hungry!
This beautiful blue building is the seat of the cantonal newspaper called 'Der Thurgauer Zeitung'...
Let's look at it from various angles as I really like how decadently it's been renovated.
At first, I thought that yellow and orange are the municipality (or cantonal) colours, but I couldn't find any reference proving this point. Maybe there is no deeper meaning behind it...
This painting shows a big fire in Arbon with a saying: God helps, God helped, God will help...
There really is not one street that wouldn't be worth a visit...
Now we'll walk down the hill along The Church of St. Martin to the lake promenade. We were already in a hurry as the weather forecast was showing some rain for the rest of the day and even though I am not made out of sugar I really dislike getting wet. So let's hurry up a bit...
The gardeners are making sure that there are some blooming installation all year long. That's the plan for our garden too!
And here we are! I truly thought that this is a round touristic path, so that we can enjoy these stunning lake views from all angles. It turns out that this is not the case, and it's a path that leads you to boats, so at some point you have to turn around and walk back. It was still worth it!
This is called The Mermaids Fountain. It's a bit spooky, and I wonder if it's ever cleaned as it would be much nicer without all those stains. But apparently, it is an important landmark and I do respect that.
This view reminds me of our summer trip to Trogir in Croatia...
The weather didn't play in our favour, but it was good this way as it made the views more interesting...
The lake Constance is so large that it looks like a sea at some places. The water is not deep at the shore, and the lake is the perfect summer location for families who want to enjoy many water sports activities without traveling far away.
Can you see those birds on the palls in the middle?
The promenade is 3 kilometres long and at some places you can come down to the lake. It was so quiet! We only came across a few people and one couple with a Labrador who jumped in the lake at least 10 times. It was so cute to watch...
The only disadvantage of these low hanging clouds was that we couldn't see the mountains, but well... maybe next time 😊
The lake Constance is one of our favourite places to go when we need some peace and quiet. It never disappoints us.
See you next time...