Day 25: Rothenburg

Today is Saturday and it's our last real day in the northern part of Europe. Tomorrow we'll spend the night at the Frankfurt Hahn Airport, and at 4:30 AM on Monday morning we'll set off for Portugal (with a little apprehension, since we don't have all of our train and hotel reservations finished, like we've had so far.)

We both felt a little better this morning, and, after a nice breakfast, we were ready to go explore the city. As we were leaving the hotel, though, Kathy noticed a computer (rather than a coin-operated Internet terminal, which we've been using) and she asked if we could use it. I was able to plug in my camera to the USB port and transfer some photos to my thumb drive and upload a few to Flickr. When it came time to eject the camera, though, we had to ask the desk clerk to read the German menus to us (I didn't want to hit "Format" instead of "Eject" after all!) We both had the impression that we shouldn't have used the computer to upload pictures, rather than just browse the 'Net. In the future, I guess we'll be a little more explicit.

I don't have time to link to all the pictures, but you can click here to see the photos I've uploaded to Flickr so far.

Our guidebook had a pretty complete self-guided walking tour of the city, so we set out to follow it. We started at the Marketplatz and the clock tower with the animated figures drinking wine, illustrating an old town legend, the Meistertrunk, that was actually first dreamed up as part of a play in the 1800 designed to increase the romatic image of Rothenburg. At St. Jakob's church, built in the 14^th century, we saw the 500-year-old, 35-foot-high wood carving by Timan Riemenshneider, called the Alter of the Hold Blood. The detail was very impressive.

After the church, we wandered the city, looking at the old houses, walking the wall, climbing the gates, and visiting the gardens until it was time for lunch. During our trip we've tried to read books with a European background, and then, when we're finished, leave them at the hotel for others to read. I just finished Brandenburg Gate and we wanted to leave it, but the hotel didn't have a library. To make sure it would get read, we went looking for the city's youth hostel, and left it there.

Then, because we were close to one of the recommended restaurants in our guidebook, we stopped for lunch at the Gasthof zur Goldenen Rose, where we had some good filling German food. After lunch we walked the long way pack to the hotel and then spent the first part of the afternoon trying to nail down our plans for Spain and Portugal. Tommorrow we'll be traveling through Nurnberg which has a large Reservation Travel area in the train station, and we'd like to get as much nailed down as possible before we head for Iberia.

Around 4:00 we headed over to a Cafe where we'd seen a sign for Internet access. Along the way we called Hosanna, and Kathy bought a couple of pasteries recommended in our guidebook. After lunch she bought a tasteless pie-crust pastery called a Schneeballen, that is heavily promoted all over town. Our guidebook said not to bother, but she wanted to try them out anyway. Since they were such a disappointment, she felt we really had to try out the pasteries that the book recommended. At the Cafe, Kathy had a large coffee and I answered emails and brought the blog up to date.