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Wow. Okay, I'm going to put my supertramp theme on hold for a while, at least until I, well, how do I put this, actually do something related to my original plans. Call it a combination of weather and work, but haven't made it work so far.
I decided early into last week that this weekend would be the long awaited, faithfully planned beginning. Plotted destinations for a weekend camping trip with two friends, eventually settling on a Luxembourg/Belgium trip. However, rumors of bad weather approaching for the weekend forced a change in plans.
Scared off by rain, I'm a wimp, okay.
Settled on a replacement plan of a last minute trip to Rothenburg ob der tauber in Bavaria, a town that I've been wanting to visit for two years, but had somehow never made the short two hour drive to see. We scrambled for last minute hotel reservations, ending up spread between two different hotels.
We departed Saturday morning for the drive, arriving in Rothenburg shortly before noon. Well, technically, we arrived at 11:30 and then again shortly before noon. I am not a fan of GPS driving and we ran into issues with it. After it
first turned us down a private driveway we ended up inexplicably on the road out of town again. We made one more attempt and after one ill-planned and unsuccessful trip through the streets of the town looking for parking at one of the hotels we settled on a parking lot outside of the city walls. We decided to leave our luggage in the car, as it was to early to check into the hotels, and scouted out the town.
Rothenburg really is an incredible city. To echo the words of almost every other blog entry on the town, Rothenburg is one of the best preserved medieval cities in the world, with a complete city wall. It is a little touristy, groups clogging the city square in the middle of the day, but definitely worth a visit.
We make a quick loop through the streets and settle down for lunch.
Wait, actually, I'm going to stop there to discuss the weather. Absolutely beautiful. Low to mid 70's, sunny. Perfect weather for camping. Figures.
Okay, back to lunch. We settle just off the main square, in back-hotel beergarten. After a very good, very unhealthy schnitzel and hefeweizen lunch, we
head out for a better tour of the town before gathering our bags from the car and checking into our hotels. I am staying at the Hotel Goldenes Lamm, a very nice little hotel just off of the market square and I am very pleased with my luck on my room. Second floor, front of the building with an incredible view of the square and the town. I drop off the bags and meet my friends down the street at their hotel, the Hotel Roten Hahn. It is nice also, very quiet and peaceful, but more expensive and without the view. We sit at on the tables in front of the hotel, have a drink, then decide to check out the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum, right across the street. Or actually, we would have checked it out if it hadn't closed two hours earlier at 3:30. So, we roam around aimlessly for a while, then settle on an early dinner. We eat at Pizza Roma, very good, but too much food after our big lunch. Their tables in front are a perfect place for us to relax though and we sit for a while drinking coffee, watching the afternoon
exodus of daytrippers leaving. We head back to the center, and decide to take the Nightwatchmans tour of town. It is very entertaining, and there is some interesting history in it. I would recommend this tour to anyone who visits for an overnight. After the tour, we sit in the now empty square for a while, then head off fairly early for bed.
At 5 AM, I figure out the downside of my great hotel room. The great location means that my room opens up to the market square, but also to the clock tower, and more importantly, the clock BELL. It rings every hour on the hour, without exception, throughout the night. I don't really notice it until 5 am, when its quirk messes with me. The clock bell actually is two different rings, from, I'm assuming two different bells. The problem of this was, they don't ring at the same time, ding-dong style, but rather one after the other. Meaning, one rings five times, then the other rings five times. So, at five a.m., I heard the bells and though I had overslept. I jumped out of bed thinking it was 10 and I only had an
hour until checkout. After figuring out what happened, I went back to bed, but couldn't get back to sleep.
Since it was starting to get light outside, I set out at 5:45 with my ipod and wandered around the empty morning streets. I love wandering around a town first thing in the morning as the sun is first coming up. It's really peaceful. I make a route through the town, down to the castle gardens, then back over to the city walls. I climb up to the walkway and make the roundabout tour of town along the ramparts, before strolling back to the square. I sit on the steps, and watch the pigeons. I switch to classical music on my ipod, and get a John Woo moment as the pigeons take flight to Carmina Burana. Shortly, a fruit stand starts to set up and I have an apple and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice as the city starts to wake up. One tourist turns to two, turns to a busload, turns to five busloads, then the square is full again, in a instant. I meet my friends for coffee, then we climb the city hall tower to check
out the view. The climb is not bad, though it gets a little thin and interesting towards the end. Nothing like the stairway of the Black Tower in Cesky Budejovice (craziest stairway I have ever climbed), but still interesting. The view is incredible, of red tiled roofs and the hills around town. We follow this with another walk through the castle gardens then head back to check out of our hotels.
We drop off our bags at the car, then head back into town to see the Crime and Punishment museum. It was an interesting visit, heavy with ornate punishment masks of different types, and other instruments of death, torture, and the like. We follow this with one more good meal at a cafe on the square before departing again for home.
Overall, a very good trip.
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