Mittermeier Restaurant Und Hotel Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Jon and I have a new deal. I plan a trip and drive, and he'll go anywhere. He'll even drive us home. One of the perks of subbing, I'm left with pockets of time to come up with trips. Trip number one, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, mostly because it fell neatly within the day trip range.

Part of our deal means I drive . . . The morning greeted us with a pea soup fog, enough to hide all road signs from any meaningful distance. GPS is good. I did drive fast ...

... an Indian, people wearing little clothes, and was shown grilling people's decapitated heads. Of course Europe had plenty of buildings, finely clad people, culture, etc...

During WW II, on March 16, 1945, Wurzburg was heavily bombed and it pretty much devastated the city. In order to reconstruct the Residence, photos taken by a Nazi officer were used.

Along with the Residence and a large fortress ...

... century. We had lunch at a quaint Italian restaurant, the owner from Naples. Best food of the trip!

This town is known for cuckoo clocks and Christmas shops. Everywhere there were beautiful shops and quaint cafes. I would return to this town in a minute. Our guide, Victoria, was enamored with the color orange. "From her head down to her toenails". She was
originally from ...

Guten tag from Germany!

We've been all over Europe, to random places like Bosnia and Slovakia, but we've never managed to make it to Germany. So here we are!

We flew through Iceland, and landed in Frankfurt yesterday. We picked up our very cute Smart Car convertible, and drove out west to the famous Romantic Road. This is a 220 mile long stretch of road running south that is dotted with castles and medieval towns. We stayed the night in ...

At Bamberg we left the Danube-Main Canal. The canal was completed in 1992 and allows ships to travel from the North Sea to the Black Sea. This connection had been dreamed of since Charlemagne tried digging one in the 8th century. Another attempt was made in the 1800s but the advent of the railroad doomed it. It took 20th century technology to make it possible. The canal itself has 34 locks out of the total of ...

... We found the entrance and paid a small fee to tour the inside, and it was worth every penny. On the rear balcony was a large carved altar of wood and gold, showing the scene of the last supper. Like the other ones in this church, the altar had wings that could be folded in like a large cabinet. This was the only church we toured that allowed us to walk on the main altar and even around the backside to see the many medieval paintings covering it. This, I thought ...

Today we drove from Legoland, near Augsburg, to Rothenburg.
This route took us north-west, up what the German tourism ministry promotes as the Romantic Road. The idea as far as I could tell, is that the road putters through lots of medieval (and not so medieval) villages. It is a whole lot better than just sitting on the Autobahn.
After changing a tire, we did sit on the Autobahn for a bit. I had read ...

... than 50 different beers are brewed in Bamberg or its surroundings, the most famous being the 'Rauchbier' (smoke beer). Bamberg lies in the heart of Franconia, a region in the north of Bavaria that still boasts nearly three hundred breweries, many of which are concentrated in the river valleys around Bamberg. This is where ancient brewing traditions survive, with a pub and brewery business often combined with farming and ...

... as being runny yogurt or pudding. There were absolutely no vegetables, either. The tour was awesome - the guy was friggin' hilarious, and sounded a bit like Borat. He makes a killing - there were probably 70-90 people on the tour, at 6 Euros each. And he does this every night during the summers. You do the math ... but keep in mind that this town is dead during the off-season. Turns out that Brad is a teacher from Ontario, and that he isn't ...

... the next day and headed to Reutte, Austria. In Reutte, we hiked up to the Ehrenburg ruins. The baron built a series of three castles, connected by a wall that crossed the valley, effectively stopping all traffic so that he could tax everyone. The castles were eventually conquered and demolished so only the ruins remained. We climbed up there late in the evening so it was virtually deserted. We got some beautiful ...