Day 547: Corvey and the Kassel Bergpark

Busy day today with two WHS visits, though one was a re-visit! Up early in the morning and headed over to Corvey, where the site was the Carolingian Westwork. This is basically a huge western facade from a church that dated back to the 850s, ie the Carolingian era. It was a very important monastery too, though the monastery (and indeed the church attached to the western facade) were both long gone.

It was interesting enough, particularly the frescoes inside which featured Christian interpretations of Greek myths (eg Odysseus), something that's non existent these days but even for the times was unusual. Apparently when the monastery was built this was the fringe of the Christian world and it was a part of converting the local pagans. Interesting.

Back in the car where we drove about two hours to the south, heading for the town of Kassel. We'd stopped here last time to check out the Bergpark World Heritage Site, which was a large mountain park with an enormous water feature that naturally didn't run in the winter. It runs two days a week during summer, so we made the trek to go and see it.

Lots of other people had the same idea; it was very crowded but nice to see! The whole show takes about 90 minutes, as the water works its way through various features like cascades, waterfalls, an aqueduct, several fountains etc down the hill. You start at the top and just follow it down, which was quite nice. Took lots of photos to do a blog post on at some point!

The hotel we'd stayed at last time had expensive summer rates this time around, so we stayed about 15 minutes outside of town. Only food option nearby was IKEA!Read more