20th April 2017. Sittensen, Germany.

We had intended only using this aire as a one night stop over but it was so lovely here that we decided it would be a good place to stop so Darren could get on with some work and as an added bonus we could go back to the ice cream parlour to try some other flavours!

Before we sat down at our laptops we popped  into the Tourist Information Office to find out what we could see in the area.  The Tourist Information lady was SO helpful, she asked how long we were staying and when she heard that we were leaving in the morning she asked whether we’d like to go upstairs and see the museum which was only open at the weekends in the afternoon.  She said she’d got the key so we were welcome to look around.

The museum was housed in the room under the roof, it was definitely an “OH, WOW!” moment when she opened the door.  It was like the TARDIS in there, SO much bigger than we expected.  She told us we could walk into the exhibitions (each alcove was set up as a different type of shop) and that we were allowed to touch too.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear that, then she told us she needed to go back downstairs because she had a visitor turning up.

It was very interesting looking at the various exhibits, I especially liked the barber/hairdressing shop and the cobblers/saddlery.  The equipment at the dentist reminded me of the dental surgery from when I was a child, aargh!

As we were looking around the exhibits on the large landing the lady came back upstairs and asked whether we’d been in the other room.  We’d seen another door but it was closed so assumed we weren’t supposed to go in there.  It was the room above the watermill and it was set up for a wedding.  What a lovely place to get married.

She had a little chat about some of the office equipment and we reminisced about using manual typewriters, having to do everything in triplicate with carbon paper sandwiched between them.  She said her boss would only allow up to 3 corrections before he whipped the paper out of the typewriter, ripped it into pieces  then made her type it again.  What a cruel task master.

We thanked her for allowing us to visit the museum and went for ‘lunch’ over at Eiscafe Dante.  A lady served us this time, she was equally as friendly as the man who had served us yesterday.  We took ages trying to decided what to have and she was very patient.

The ice cream was as delicious as it had been yesterday only this time, because we were eating in, it was served in pretty glass bowls.  We told her that it was the best ice cream we had eaten on our trip, which made her smile and she asked us where we’d been.  We listed the countries and as we got to Spain she asked whether we’d been to Portugal, we told her we had and that it was beautiful, she was pleased to hear that and told us that she was Portuguese.

We had a nice walk in the sun and explored the area around the church that the Tourist Information lady had mentioned, she also suggested a nice country park 5 km away which we’re hoping to visit tomorrow.   Beside the church there was a monument in a little park which was like a mini Stonehenge,  unfortunately as we can’t read German we’re still in the dark as to what it was for.  Just along the path from that was an enormous boulder which had been engraved with the sea and rivers running to it past the names of certain places.  There was another monument in front of the beautiful church which had a kneeling figure wearing a cloak with his arms around two other figures, the cloak on the statue was highly engraved.  We followed the path past the river and stopped for a while to watch a little bird hopping around on the rocks in the water then I lost sight of him so we returned to our van.

We spent the rest of the day inside (which was a good call as the sun had disappeared and it was chilly outside.  One at a time all the other vans left the car park and we became Billy No Mates.  It was so peaceful we could hear the birds chirping in the trees.