I think I've explained my note taking system before, but I'll review. I keep a pocket sized notebook and pen with me, not all the time, but at times when I think I'll need it, like traveling, and I jot notes as I go along. The kind of details that would otherwise be forgotten. This is a critical step if you want to remember details and can easily be done when you sit and rest in the restaurant, bar or cafe. I used the jotted notes to write the stories in my spiral notebook and I pick through that stuff to write here.

Pretty much every trip I've ever gone on, my writing in the spiral notebook doesn't keep up with the trip. So I'll still be writing about what happened in the airport getting on the plane when I'm Day 2 into the trip. Usually at some point I get tired of trying to catch up and scrawl a few nouns and verbs to capture the general flavor of what we did, and usually the last days of the trip are not recorded at all. I always think I'm going to do it when I get home but I never do.

This trip was no different although Friday I sat in the kitchen with some hot tea and my notebooks and caught up some Nürnberg notes and saw this story that I forgot to tell you.

The second day we were there, we ended a very long day by going to a restaurant up by Dürer's house. We approached the door and there was a sign that I believe said that we should enter the restaurant around the corner. We went around the corner and there was another sign that I believe said that we should enter the restaurant back the way we came. We went back to the first door and entered and they immediately sent us down the stairs into the Alte Keller (Old Cellar).

And this was not a Las Vegas phony old cellar but a real, genuine old cellar. But it was cozy and not crowded and soon we had tall beers and hot food (me: mushrooms and dumplngs, him: mixed grill with hare, venison and pheasant) in front of us.

Not far from our table, a sort of Pirates of the Caribbean mannequin hung on the wall, shackled in stocks and wearing a nightshirt. During our meal, the servers brought a trio of young women through the restaurant, shackled in stocks and laughing. They exited, I believe to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later. The server paused at the nightshirt guy and did something and then a um, large, stiff appendage swung out from under the nightshirt. Everyone in the restaurant laughed. I was thinking: you'll never see that in America.