The town is pretty easy to get around in, until you want to walk up to the church. The great thing about Idar-Oberstein is that there is a lot of shopping and the town center is really interesting. As you can imagine, there are jewelers everywhere with some fantastic work. Here is a fountain for the gem miners:
One of the plates at the base of the fountain:
The church there is cool because it is built into the side of the mountain. It is a more modern church but worth going to go see.
Here are the steps up to the church. As usual in Germany, no elevators or escalators.
The inside of the church has a water source that comes directly out of the rock but not a lot of water was flowing that day. Here is a picture from the balcony in the church.
There was a backdoor at the church that you could use to get to an overlook for the city:
There were a couple of castle up in the area that I checked out too. One was closed so I couldn't tour it. The other was pretty much in ruins but interesting to see anyway.
One of the neatest things at Idar-Oberstein was their museum on gem stones! I couldn't take pictures inside but it was completely awesome. I think it was worth the drive alone. The had stones from all over the world and I got to see things that I have never in my live experienced before. On top of that they had some HUGE geodes!
Finally, there was an old mine near by that I drove up to. I didn't go in because I was pretty much worn out at that point. I did walk around the park and they had some things you could see. One was an area where they used to have some gallows...a little creepy if you ask me!
Here is an entrance to a mine shaft:
Overall I really liked Idar-Oberstein. I will probably go back eventually to see the mine. Since the weather is so bad that at least gives me an option to do something inside!
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