Advertisement
Published: December 15th 2006
Rothenberg and the Romantic Rhine
The Road This morning, after breakfast, we got back on the road with Rothenberg as the final destination for the day. After punching in the address into the GPS system we were off. The road system in Germany really is nice. The roads are smooth, there are no potholes and their exits are clearly marked making driving very simple.
The only challenging part of it all is …the really, really fast drivers. At no point during the day was I driving faster than everyone else on the road. Just to say I did it, I hit 100mph today (actually 170 kph) and while I was doing it there were people still passing me like I was standing still. Crazy!
After three hours of driving and one gas fill up, the first of the trip (three cheers for a diesel engine), we made it to Rothenberg. Rothenberg is renowned to have one of the best Christmas Markets in Germany. We shall see…
Hotel and the City Walls We arrived at our hotel which is outside the city walls. The place is really nice which is
too bad since tomorrow we have to move to a different, and not as luxurious, one. But either way, our room’s great and it has the snazziest toilet seat we’ve seen in Europe. Check the pictures. Also, and maybe most importantly, the owner has two golden retrievers we can pet. They are kinda old (about 10 or 11) but they are very sweet and officially the first dogs we can actually touch without someone looking at us like we’re nuts.
After checking in we went to walk around town. Rothenberg is still surrounded by city walls built in the 14th century. Within the city walls, you get to see a piece of a German Burg from prior to the modern era. All of the buildings are picture perfect. It’s what the average American thinks of when they think of Germany.
We walked around a large part of town on the city walls and got some really cool pictures of the town. We saw the oldest building that’s still standing which is near the city walls. We also were able to take some pics of our hotel from inside the walls through one of the arrow slots - holes
in the wall to allow archers to shoot oncoming invaders.
This evening we plan to check out the market and get some dinner. Who knows? I’ll finish the rest of this later!
Christmas Market and Dinner Well, after being in markets in a bigger city, we were a little disappointed by the market here in Rothenberg. We headed out from our hotel and poked around the market for a little while. Because its colder here than in Cologne we felt the need for Gluhwein fast…so Gluhwein it was. We then shared a sausage of some sort; this one was actually twisted in a spiral for so that it fit into the bun which was nice. We didn’t look quite as stupid eating it as we did with the half meter long bratwursts in Cologne.
A little later we found a booth selling pastries; one of which intrigued me. It was called a fruischtbott. At Kel’s goading I got one and you could tell it was a meal unto itself as soon as she handed it to me. While it was only six inches long it easily weighed more than a pound. It turned out
to be a sort of German fruit cake and man was it good. After eating it I could have called it quits for the evening but Kel needed food and the market had little in the way of selection other than sausages.
Kel decided that we needed to hit a restaurant in order to get her some food. She found a little place off the main square which seemed nice. She got duck and spaetzle (German potato noodle things) while I got a cold meats and cheese plate since I was already stuffed. Dinner was really good and by time it was done we were ready to come back to our room and rest. Our room is so nice we just wanted to come and hang out till bed.
Hope you guys are well! We miss you all!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0428s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Al Beimfohr
non-member comment
toiletten
Ich liebe ihren toiletten sitze! Love the blog, Michael......makes me want to run over to Deutschland right now, cold weather be damned! Have a few "bieren mit schnapps chasers" for us........All the Best and have a Great Christmas (in Nuernburg, if you can get there)........Love you guys........Al (don't miss Dresden, Eisenach, Regensburg, Sylt and the BMW factory tour in Dingolfing)