Romantic Rothenburg ob der Tuber

We loved Rothenburg !!! This medieval town is right on the Romantic Road and old town is surrounded by this amazing stone wall.

We stayed at the Hotel Hornburg as it was the top rated place on Trip Advisor.  We've been using Trip Advisor a lot on picking accommodations...we used them on all of our stays on the Germany trip and it has treated us well. 

 

We got the family room on the top floor which had a nice sitting room and a separate bedroom.  Addie had her own little toddler bed and Harry got a pack 'n play.  The owners were absolutely fab and helped us out so much.  There breakfast was great as well.  I had my first soft boiled egg and the gentleman had drawn a smiley face on the outside of the shell.  One thing about our room though that I thought was super unique were these double windows.  The both opened inwards...it must be for keeping it warmer in the winter???

We headed up to the city center Monday morning and it was beautiful.  The Councillor's Tavern is now where the Tourist Office is at but it used to be an exclusive tavern for just the town council members.  Starting at 11AM each day the bells chime and little people come out the side windows like a giant cuckoo clock.  The legend goes back to 1631 when Catholic troops attacked and occupied Protestant Rothenburg.  The Catholic general threatened to destroy the city and in a whim he offered to spare the city if a Councilor could drink 3 1/4 liters of wine in one draught.  One of the former mayors of the city managed to do this and saved the city....now that is dedication to your town.  The building also has a dial showing the day of the month and a sun dial at the top.

The Town Hall was pretty cool.   There are all these little windows in the roof and the windows on the front tower all spiral downwards.

We walked all over town and on the opposite end we found the Castle Gardens.  In the gardens we ran into a couple who was from New Mexico and in Europe to visit family but they were taking a river cruise through various countries.  Their next stop was Transylvania in Romania...way cool.

Beyond the gardens were some beautiful views of the Tauber Valley.  Cute little villages and farmsteads scattered throughout the country side.

We ate lunch a great place that had traditional Franciscian dishes (that was the region were were in). Addie in traditional fashion again ate only French fries...now I'm not that bad of a mother to only let my children eat French fries. We did bring along apple sauce, bananas, raisins, and animal crackers for her to eat as well.

While Kevin paid for dinner, the kids and I sat out by the Town Hall. As we sat an older gentleman who was pushing is mother in a wheel chair and so I had the kids wave at them. They came closer and then the gentleman came to sit by me and Harrison and started talking to us. I told him that I only spoke English and then he got out a little song book and was looking for an English song...he found "My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean". He proceeded to look for other songs in Spanish, Russian, French and German. Then he started to do this little cuckoo song and made a little noise like the cuckoo bird with his hands. Addison immediately tried to copy him and in watching the two of them playing back in forth, I saw myself with my grandpa. He would do funny little things like that with us and sing fun little songs. It was a really special moment.

We found the Medieval Crime Museum which might have been really cool to go through but I didn't feel like freaking Addison out.  She did have lots of fun posing in the stockades.

We found our way up into part of the city wall that we could walk on.  As we walked by a little opening I peered in and saw this enclosure boarded up with a bench and two openings in the seat.  I found the medieval toilets that were built into the wall.

 The openings let the stuff just fall down the outside of the wall...crazy stuff!!! Obviously it is not still in use otherwise I wouldn't have taken this picture.

One thing I had to try were these crazy looking balls that were displayed in many shops called Schneeballs. We actually found a place with a video showing how to make them.  Essentially they are strips of pastry that they collect up in a ball and put in a metal holder which gets dipped in a deep fryer.  They they coat the balls with whatever.  I got a chocolate one and could only eat about half of it.  Kevin thought it was a waste of money, but I was trying to experience local cuisine since they were local speciality.

I had to check out the Kathe Wohlfahrt shop because it is the Christmas shops of all Christmas shops.  I absolutely love Christmas and Kevin took the kids for a walk so I could get a bit of time to look around.  I of course was way overwhelmed so I didn't end up getting anything.

We love Germany so much that we thought it was only right to have a really nice souvenier to remember it by so we were on the hunt for the perfect cuckoo clock.  We looked in many shops but this place had the nicest lady and found that my husband had very expensive taste.  We had a really tough time picking one out because they were all amazing but we did find the best one for us and our budget, but of course in all the bustle of things I forgot to take a picture of it.  We did figure out that we could get it cheaper if we had it shipped back to my parents in the US (it got us out of paying the VAT tax - 19% off that way!!!).  

Of course no trip to Rothenburg can be had without a picture in front of the Plonlein and Siebers Towers.  We set the timer up on this one instead of trusting strangers to capture this moment for us.

I had to include this picture because it is the oddest looking vehicle I have ever seen.  I especially love the monkey head on the globe on top of the cab.

Heidelberg

In Heidelberg, we got to stay on the Executive Floor of the Marriott hotel...we got a really, really good deal I guess. So it was pretty cool to be able to go down to the little lounge and get free drinks and snacks.  Funny thing was that we had the same stuff in our mini bar and we would have had to have paid for that...go figure!

We started our morning in Heidelberg with a mile or so walk along the river to the Karl-Theodor Bridge.

Addison posed by the famous Heidelberg Bridge Monkey which is a remake after the first one was destroyed in the Palantine War.  A plaque next to the monkey says, "Why are you looking at me? Haven't you seen the monkey in Heidelberg? Look around and you will probably see, more monkeys like me."  Well, Addison is our little monkey.

The towers at the edge of the bridge are really cool.  The bridge is just for pedestrians now as to preserve the few sculptures that are on it.

We headed into the "old town" to check out the Markplatz (market square). The Heiliggeistkirche (Holy Ghost church) was so pretty had little market vendors on the outside in which we found our Heidelberg Christmas ornament.  

From Universitätsplatz and the old university, we got our first good view of the castle.

We wanted to get a great view of the city and see the Heidelberg Castle so we took a ride up in the 

Bergbahn up the very steep hill.

At the top we got great views of the city.  I love all the red roof tops.  It was a bit hazy so you can't photograph things very well out in the distance.  Addison was obsessed with looking in the telescopes, but she had fun with them even when we didn't put money in them.  We got to eat lunch at the top of the hill before heading down to the castle.

We got one of the audio tours that Kevin and I shared between us to get the low down on the castle and found some pretty cool things.

This is probably one of the world's largest wooden wine casks.  This is in the cellar of the castle and the king would use it as a means for the local farmers to pay taxes to him.  Instead of money they were to bring a certain amount of wine that they produced and dump it in the cask.  Now with a combination of hundreds types of wine it was said that the concoction did not taste very good.  When I was taking my turn to look around and walk on top of it, I actually heard a young guy say, "How did they get it in here?"  His friends mocked him by saying...duh, it was built in here...what a tool!

The building behind used to house knights and one day it caught on fire.  Legend says that one knight jump out of the window and landed so hard that he left his heal mark in the stone.

One of the living quarters was designed by a particular architect who had a tragic story.  As he was constructing this building his twin sons fell to their deaths one day while playing on the scaffolding.  He was so grief stricken that he couldn't bare to continue.  One night he had a dream that his two boys came to him as angels and told him not worry about them and continue on.  He had not yet designed the door's head piece so he made it of his two sons as angels.

This little door inside the big castle gate doors was legend to be attacked by a witch who was so mad that she couldn't get in that she bit the ring and you can see the bite marks on it today.

This towers wall just gave way one day...hard to believe since it about 3 meters thick.  Poor engineering I think.  Anyway now it has been taken over by nature and actually looks really pretty and exposes the rooms inside.

While the kids were asleep we took the opportunity to enjoy a bit of the gardens.  We found a guy who looked like he knew what he was doing with a camera and asked him to take our picture.  Well, one he grabbed it he started messing with all the knobs and buttons.  He could tell we had know clue what we were doing with it and seemed somewhat disgusted that he couldn't get it set up for his ideal picture.  We were just happy to get a picture with us in it at a normal size and not have to crop it later.

I thought this sculpture was pretty cool.  Me and Zeus hanging out.  These gardens were meant to be one of the famous major "wonders of the world" but they were never completed.  

We interrupted Addison's nap too early so she was not a happy camper and it was going to start raining soon so to calm her down I tried getting her to pose in a picture with the castle.  It kind of worked, but I had to carry her for about a 1/4 mile as we walked back to the hotel.

Cochem, Castles and Wine

This morning we woke up to another beautiful day.  We drove our car to the other side of the river to park as our hotel had none, so we got a beautiful view back towards the town and castle when we came back over the bridge.  

Here is our hotel - The Hotel Muller.  After an amazing breakfast we went exploring.  Our main goal was to find the bottle of wine that we drank the night before and buy a couple of bottles to bring home.  Well we got sent on a wild goose chase because the lady at the desk didn't understand what we were looking for even though at first it seemed that she did.  

We were sent to this shop and even though we couldn't find the "one" we were looking for, we found lots of others. When we asked about which wine she would recommend she whipped out about 6 glasses and started pouring us three different types of wine to try at 10AM!!! I was feeling pretty toasty afterwards and couldn't finish the third glass, but we bought a bottle of each.  Great marketing tactics though!!!!  I forgot to get a picture the first time around so I asked to take another and she said you couldn't take a picture without a glass in your hand so she filled up another one for Kevin.

Kevin and I always come up with crazy ideas while on vacation and after seeing that you could buy grape vines....we thought...heck we could start our own winery when we go home.  When we got our heads out of the sky, we thought it might be kind of cool to grow a few vines and make our own.  Wonder if they export to the US????

We climbed a wicked steep hill to Cochem Castle.  It felt like Nueschwanstein all over again but not as tall of a hill and now pushing two kids.  It was a great view from up above.  We didn't got into the castle because we were waiting to tour Burg Ehlz later in the day.  We stopped for a quick lunch at the cafe half way down the hill. I tried asking for a recommendation but the waitress only spoke a little English and we didn't quite sync up on things so I just ordered a bratwurst. Addison got her usual pomme frites (french fries) but quickly turned away from them after trying the ketchup.  It seemed to me to be like a homemade version with loads of paprika in it.  

After our wild goose chase to find our new most favorite wine, Kevin finally went into the hotel's resturant and got the wine menu and asked where to get the specific wine.  The gal offered to sell Kev the two bottles she had left for 7.60Euro each...we were floored because he spent 16 Euro on the bottle he brought up to our room last night.  She did give us directions to the Loosen Winery where we could buy the actual wine.  When we got there we couldn't find anyone around, so a passer by pointed to the front door of their home and said to ring the bell.  The kids were sleeping in the car so I stayed back while Kevin went in.  He was greeted by an amazing women who spoke absolutely no English and Kevin spoke absolutely no German, but they both got it figured out on what we wanted.  We both tried about 4 different types of wines and thanks to my grandpa teaching me how to count to 10 in German I could tell her that we wanted to buy "veir" bottles of wine.

Next we headed out towards the highly acclaimed Burg Eltz Castle.  Kevin had cleverly figured out how to plan our whole route before we left through Google maps and then to our Tom Tom.  Well what we soon discovered as we got close to the castle that "Jane" was trying to take us right to the castle, not the closest car park.  So we went back into town and headed to the closest car park.  Well, after we got the kids loaded in the stroller and headed towards a little sign that pointed towards the castle we quickly found out that we weren't where we thought we wanted to be.  We ended up at the base of the hill and was going to be trekking through the woods on a 40 minute stroll.  About 15 minutes in we found that it wasn't a simple little stroll, we ended up in some pretty serious rocky gorges and narrow pathways and steep rocky hills.  There is really no turning back at this point so we went on both fearing that we had a really steep climb once we actually got to the castle and we were going to have to come back through all of this to get tot the car.  The woods were beautiful though and down below our path was a little river babbling away.

When we finally did get to the castle it was beautiful, but yes indeed we had to climb up about 140 steps.  After several attempts to get a family picture, we went to get our tour tickets and waited for the English speaking tour.  As we got to the door they started to close it.  We asked if we were going to be able to make it on the tour and they attempted to be polite and say that it was full now and we would have to wait for the next one.  The guide sent me out to the front ticket office who then said they didn't know when the next English tour would be sent me back out to another person who told me to ask back at the ticket office.  So gave up on the English tour and thought we'd just go on the German guided one.  We thought "What the heck, as long as we can see inside the castle"  Well, we got in line and once we got to the door they cut us off again.  This was a bit ridiculous.  Finally someone came out of the little red door and said they would maybe do another English tour in an hour...it was now 4:30 and we had at least 45 minutes getting back to our car and a 2 hour drive to our hotel in Heidelberg.  So completely tired and frustrated we gave up and got a refund on our money and hiked back through the woods to the car.

Back in Germany

We were so excited to be heading back to Germany on this trip.  Kevin and I both just feel this strong connection to Germany and just love being there.  We think it partly has to do with the landscape feeling a lot like "home" (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin), but we honestly feel that if we were ever given the opportunity to live there we would jump on it.  

On this trip we flew into Frankfurt were focusing on the central part of the country and visiting my family roots this time.  Just outside of Frankfurt is the Wiesbaden US Army Airfield and this place is special to me because my grandpa Dick Schafbuch was stationed here for about a year and half while he served in the US Army.  He and my grandma were not married yet so she couldn't join him, so I was hoping to take a bunch of pictures to show her what it all looked like but we ran into a bit of a snag.

"Jane" ended up bring us in the back way into the base so we got a really nice drive around it and finally ended up at the front gate.  The kids had just fallen asleep, but I really wanted a picture of all of us in front of the base's sign so they would know where their great-grandpa served.  As we were walking to the sign with camera in hand, a guard started walking towards us and said were weren't allowed to take pictures of the base.  Totally bummed out we walked back to the car.  All I wanted from this place was my picture in front of the stupid sign.  So Kevin being the wonderful husband that his is offered to drive me around the round about so I could take a picture of the sign, but before we did that we drove up to the guard station and asked first.  The guard informed us that he is required to tell us that he couldn't keep us from taking any pictures of any parts of the base but if we did he would be forced to call the military police.  Well, I was pretty bummed, but I didn't want to get us in any trouble at the beginning of our trip.  Again, Kevin be the world's greatest husband, he drove down the road about a mile and told me to get out the zoom lens and try to take some pictures back of the base. So this is the best I've got.

We continued on our trip to drive along the Rhine River Valley.  Pictures honestly don't give these scenes any justice.  The day was beautiful and sunny and around each bend was another breathe taking view with vineyards, castles and quaint little villages along the water.  In all honestly you could spend 2-3 days in just the little area we drove through.

We did make a long stop in St. Goar to visit the Rheinfels Castle which was once the largest castle on the Rhine.  It was built in 1245, but was almost completely destroyed by the French in 1797.  

One side of castle gives a great view of the hilly country side again with loads of vineyards and walking paths.

The other side has great views of the Rhine River.  The castle does stick out from the side of the big hill but no castles were ever built higher than the tops of the hills to keep hidden from enemies.

We visited Heere Strass, the main street in St. Goar to check out  the local stores and found some pretty interesting things like... the World's largest beer stein.

World's largest free hanging cuckoo clock... all hand carved and painted.

I love German food!!!!  Here I ordered a pig knuckle with sauerkraut and potatoes.  Kevin had an amazing breaded pork loin. Addie ate french fries and apple juice.

After dinner we headed on the fastest route from where we were on the Rhine River to Cochem which was on the Mosel River.  Our drive to Cochem was very interesting to say the least.   I just had to take a picture of where "Jane" was taking us... a little on the curvy side.

The Mosel River Valley is so beautiful and another area that should have 2-3 days devoted to it as well.  We took a pit stop and got some beautiful views at the top of the hill before winding down into the valley.

Along the river valley there were two pretty common sights - vineyards all along the hill sides and lots of camping right next to the river.  The Mosel and Rhine River valleys are prime wine country and they utilize some of the steepest parcels of land I've seen anything grown on.  The camping is crazy too.  The tents were so big that they looked like permanent tents, but I think most of them were tents built on to campers.  Kevin and I both agreed that it would be amazing to come back and do some tent camping here.

In Cochem our hotel was right on the river and we had a balcony that we sat out on and enjoyed an amazing bottle of wine and got to sit and talk for the first time in a really long time.  It was really nice.