Our first trip of the New Year was to a small town here in Germany: Heilbronn. The group Hotel Bossa Nova was playing at a jazz club, and I really wanted to hear them play.

The poster outside the club

The venue was the Jazzclub Cave 61, a small and intimate club. But now that they’ve pretty much outlawed smoking inside all public places, it was downright comfortable.  Hotel Bossa Nova is a great band! They played music from previous CDs and some current stuff too. It was all great.  And the set was long…about 2 hrs. We loved it!

The next day we walked around town, and did a little sightseeing. Heilbronn has a nice city center with a big church, a Rathaus, and a mall.  I bought a few souvenirs, including a doggie bank by Pomme-pidon. It’s so cute.

Front door to Killianskirche (St. Killian’s Church)

Inside the church

The huge pipes of the organ. The organ was being played during our visit…and it was loud and beautiful…and loud.

This is the Rathaus

And here’s a closer look at the astronomical clock on top of the Rathaus

To continue our shopping groove, we visited a few TK Maxx stores in nearby towns. We stopped by two stores in Mannheim and one store in Karlsruhe. That’s always fun! Actually, I didn’t buy that much, but I did find a mini Finsbury Filofax that I’m now using as a wallet. It’s perfect!

This is the first TK Maxx we visited in Mannheim

This is the second  TK Maxx we visited in Mannheim

I still can’t believe malls are housed in buildings like this. The TK Maxx of Karlsruhe, is inside.

All in all our first trip of the year was a good one. We were thinking about going somewhere “warm” like Lisbon, Portugal. But it was actually snowing in Lisbon during the weekend we would have been there.  I think we made the right decision.