August 21

I slept in until 8 this morning and got some things done in terms of getting organized and packed.  Most everything is in order now.  I just have to do some wash on Sunday, then pack that away, and pack my most immediate needs in my backpack.  In the afternoon I finally explored the Kaiser Pfalz area of Ingelheim.  It is where Charlemagne had a local palace/administrative location.  I went into the museum first, which had some relics and a lot of German to read.  That was tricky, so I looked around at a lot of the stuff, then actually went outside to see the grounds.  It is set up very strangely, because they began reconstruction and preservation after people already had homes and businesses there.  For this reason, you walk past a lot of backyards, and in some cases through yards.  The ruins often border private houses as well, so it is like walking through a neighborhood where people live, that is also a museum.  And furthermore, today there was a wedding that took place in the Pfalz.  They had the ceremony in the Aula regia, which was the throne room of Charlemagne.  It is now a grassy place, surrounded by some broken wall fragments, and an 18^th century Jewish cemetery.  So I spent my time just walking around and seeing the stuff there.  It was all free of course, except for the museum, because you can't charge admission to a neighborhood where people live.  The ground is all cobblestone there, as it is in many places in Ingelheim.  But what they have done is to outline in darker stones, where the old walls and towers are that do not remain standing.  It was a nice little walk about a part of town that I had inexplicably neglected to visit until the second to last day I was here.  In fact, there are a lot of parts of town that I have not seen, mostly because they look quite similar to the rest of the city.  I think that I have seen enough though; at least the most interesting parts.  Today was relaxing, which was nice before we travel next week and school starts.  Oh, and also, KATIE'S BIRTHDAY‼‼  I called home tonight and got to talk to her and Dad and Jeff for a while, which was quite nice.  Her card even arrived a day before her birthday, which was quite something, considering that I mailed in on Monday afternoon (4 days is pretty typical though I guess).  I like Ingelheim, but I am ready to be home now.