23rd September 2016. Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany.

5th October 201610th May 2023 DarrenHB 0 Comment

We moved on to Rothenburg ob der Tauber early today, just in case there was no room left in the stellplätze, but not before I’d had my hand nibbled by a cute Shiz Tsu. I’d been admiring the little dog and his owner started chatting to me, he told me we would need to spend two days exploring Rothenburg ob der Tauber (we had only planned on having a quick cycle round!). I could have happily stayed at Rottingen another night but we needed to pick up a parcel that was being delivered to a UPS pick up point in the town.

We wandered up to the bridge before we left for one last look at the view…..

we got side tracked by the tractor when we turned to look over the left hand side of the bridge!

We almost made a bit of a ‘Boo Boo’ before we left. We were going to fill up and empty everything before we left (I was on household chores and bin emptying) and normally we would have driven over to the filling point and I would have hopped out of the van with the bag of rubbish as we got near a bin but luckily this time just as Darren was about to reverse out of our pitch I told him I would walk over with the rubbish so I opened the door and jumped out where to my horror I noticed the electric hook up was still plugged in! Whoops!

Darren turned the engine off and came and disconnected it. I dread to think what would have happened if we’d driven off with it still connected because the cable trailed round the front of our neighbouring vans to a power point behind them. We’d already tried to take our immediate neighbour’s legs from under him the previous day as we’d fiddled with the cable and it had pulled inwards towards his van. Luckily he thought it was funny and laughed when I apologised.

We arrived on the outskirts of Rothenburg ob der Tauber and the number of the roads on the route were closed so our SAT NAV had a fit and left us to sort ourselves out once again. Darren decided to follow a car that was turning off down one of the back roads with the assumption that he probably knew a route through. Luckily the driver did drive towards the road we needed and the SAT NAV kicked in again. We collected the parcel without any of the difficulties at home (e.g. do you have your passport and loads of other identification), however we needed to turn right out of the road and it had been turned into a one way street due to road works. Sod’s Law said it had to be the wrong way for us. We ended up driving down lots of narrow residential streets (some twice!) and round the outside of the town a couple of times until we finally found the stellplätze we were staying at for the night.

We were worried when we saw the ‘Road Narrows’ sign in this village on the journey to Rothenburg ob der Tauber…..

Then we reached the outskirts of Rothenburg and were detoured through narrow residential roads…..

thank goodness Darren is good at driving the van…..

Hooray! We finally reached our destination. Our overnight stop was beside the town walls.

We parked in one of the many empty bays beside the fire station (we’d been worrying unnecessarily, the car park never did get filled up). We got the bikes out and cycled into Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We were ‘blown away’ by how beautiful the city was and revised our original plan to cycle around then head off to our next stop. Instead we thoroughly explored the city until we felt we’d seen it all.

There was a covered bridge leading into the walled town.

It was extremely busy in the centre although the crowds seemed to come and go in waves, when the coaches moved on to their next stop. We were amazed at how peaceful it was away from the centre of the town.

A teddy bear blowing bubbles, what a great way to attract business.

We had a lazy, albeit slightly nervous, lunch sitting in the sun. We were seated in the road!

It takes skill to balance that many statues on your head.

Ice cream had to feature at some point in the day, Darren was being little piggy 3 scoops!

We saw a street artist(?) walking around the town centre dressed as Zorro. It was rather an unusual choice we thought! There didn’t seem to be much call for photo opportunities. Maybe if he had a Bavarian themed costume he might have more people wanting photos with him!

An interesting van from the Christmas Market with Zorro in the background…..

watch out Darren he’s got you in his sights!

Darren spotted some terrapins while I was taking photos of the moat, we weren’t expecting to see those here.

An unexpected sighting of terrapins. One of them was either shy or headless.

In fact there were terrapins AND goldfish, how can the day get any better!

Then I spotted some pigeons hanging on to the wall.

It’s amazing that they don’t knock each other off that teeny ledge.

From there we wandered to the Burggarten, it was very pretty and we spotted a bird of prey!

The creepers were starting to take on autumnal hues.

We spied a bird of prey as it landed in a tree.

Vineyards on the slope outside the town walls.

We were nearly back at our van when we spotted…..

some perfectly ripe pears growing on a tree beside the tower wall. I hope they’re not left to rot.

Back at the van we watched a teenager having a motorbike lesson. I can’t imagine a driving school being allowed to use a public car park for lessons at home, I love Europe.

It was great watching him driving back and forth.

A while later the fire engine had a call out, hopefully everyone at the scene was alright. When we’d first arrived and seen the fire station we’d hoped that they wouldn’t have a call out during the night because it would disturb our sleep! Then we’d realised how selfish that was, after all no one relishes the appearance of a fire engine at any time of day or night because it can only mean you’ve got a big problem!

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