Last night we pulled into the town of Rothenburg od Tober as night fell. We wandered around the town for a bit looking for a place to stay. It is a walled midievel village, a pretty good sized one at that.
We ended up staying at a very nice place above cafe called Cafe Frei. Dropped our bags off in the room at 9:00 pm and hit the town for a beer and some desert for dinner.
We were seated in a great place to see the legendary mechanical clock go off at 10:00 pm just when the cafe was closing down. All around good luck for such a late arrival.
***** put photo of clock here*****
This morning we had a look around the town, just as interesting by day as by night.
checked out of our hotel at about 11:00 amd hit the romantic road. I have to say it was not so very romantic. While the road is marked with a little brown sign occasionally how to get to the old romantic part of the village is not. They should consider renaming a good part of the route the industral road, as that is the majority of what you see on the route.
So we got frustrated and decided to find our way to the main road and head on down to Fussen. In doing so we found a number of very interesting tiny, little german farm villages. We really enjoyed that much more!
We pulled into Fussen at about 2:00 and look around the town for a place to eat. Found some food and then went looking for the famous Nueschwanstein Castle. It was easy to spot up on the mountain. They are working on the outside of the building and it appears to be encased in bubble wrap.
We got our tickets but had to wait for an hour for our scheduled tour. We waited at the little pub for the bus that takes up the hill and had a beer. We could easily see the sister and smaller castle from the pub.
Busses come every 20 mins. once the bus drops you off there is another 10 min walk mostly down hill to the castle. There is some up hill too. This is not an easy walk. Then there is the going back up part. The workout will clean out your lungs and your heart for sure. This is not fot the out of shape or meek, I am totally surprised I made it. We will see how I do tomorrow.
This is the view from the 1/2 point of the walk. Pretty nice, easy to live with the view for sure.
The castle is modern, in that it was started in the mid 1800s and never finished. It is really very pretty on the inside. Lots of romantic paintings based on the Wagner operas in the Arts and Crafts style. Great details painted everywhere. All those wonderful William Morris like colors and very stylized floral motifs that you see in his illustrations. Romantic Middle Ages. No photos allowed in the castle so you will have to take our word for it.
Well worth the trip and hike if you like this sort of thing, which we do, so we did it.
After surviving the tip back up the hill to the bus, we were greeted by the bus driver with the survivor song blaring out of the opened bus doors. Who said those Germans have no sense of humor anyway.
We decide to head into the Alps tonight, rather than skirting them, so pointed the car towards Innsbruck and well see how far we get. It is already 7:16 and getting on to glomming time in these Alps valleys.
