Landkreis Schwäbisch Hall

We woke up this morning in Rothenburg and took our time getting ready for the day. Had a excellent breakfast at the hotel consisting of some standard European fare, made to order eggs, and delightful waffles. I actually held off on completely stuffing myself for reasons to come very shortly.

Stepping outside into the cobblestone streets, we found ourselves in a foggy crisp morning. We wandered off towards the main square to begin our day of exploring. There are many cute shops in the town and the first one we wandered into was a teddy bear shop, which had an impressive selection of teddy bears.

Heading south, we saw a bakery that had the Rothenburg treat, schneeballe (snowball)! This consists of strips of pastry dough formed together into a ball. The outside is then traditionally coated with icing sugar or cinnamon/sugar (also less traditional options coated with chocolate). I had heard about these earlier and immediately got one to snack on. It was quite tasty, a little hard to bite through, and very messy at the end.

Wandering along, we found the famous Christmas store featuring Kathy Wolfahrt ornaments. It was like walking into December! Brooke spent some time looking through the store, finding a handful of great Christmas ornaments (some for maybe our first Christmas tree?). Afterwards we meandered back to our hotel to drop them off.

Aside - the fact that our hotel was quite central made it very effective to quickly go up to our room to drop off our bag, grab a coat, sit down for a bit. Loved it!

While we were waiting in the hotel lobby and consulting the map, we overheard the hotel staff talking to another guest. She was asking where to find the best schneeballen, and the staff was very clear to not go to Diller since they are too much of a chain and the balls are like rocks. Looking down at my bag...we totally went to Diller. Darn! Guess we'll have to sample some more.

Next we walked to the east side of the town and climbed up the steps to the town wall. You can actually walk along the entire town wall and take in the village that way. We found it very enjoyable! You can also see some of the homes/yards of the locals from up there. Walked all the way to the southern end and headed north back up the main road. We found ourselves in the most famous (and most popular) spot to take a picture in Rothenburg, the Plonlein/Siebers tower. It wasn't too hard to get some good pictures from the south side, but on the other side it was absolutely flooded with tourists, especially asians! They were everywhere and we chose to try and come back another time.

We stopped quickly at the hotel to ask for a lunch recommendation since we wanted something that was not on the main road. He suggested a simple place called Spätzle Schwob, which was just around the corner. The sun was just starting to come out for the first time on our trip, so we chose to sit outside and loved it! Brooke had Roulade and I had schnitzel, both with Spätzle of course!

When we were finishing up lunch, I asked the server where the best schneeballe in town would be. She gave us the recommendation of a little bakery called Beisbart which was over by the church. We found our way over there and I selected a hazelnut coated schneeballe. Both of us agreed that it was way better than the first one we had. The dough was soft yet still crunchy, however it still got really messy especially with the hazelnut outside.

Walking north, we found our way actually out of the city walls. There was a path that we followed and later noticed that it was a trail that leads all around the outside of the city walls. We enjoyed the view of the valley (so lush with green forest all around) and also randomly played on a children's playground. Found our way back into the city and walked through Burggarten (garden area on the west side of the city), which had excellent views overlooking the cliff and valley that the town is built on.

Heading back into the center of the town, we decided to go back to the main photo-op place (Plonlein/Siebers tower) and see if we could get a photo together. It was still really busy with other tourists and the sun was at a weird angle, casting shadows everywhere and almost directly into the camera. We were not successful (as in I gave up early because I didn't want to deal with crowds) and thought to come back later when the sun was behind the buildings. So instead we shopped around a bit and Brooke found a bottle of wine for a gift.

Stopped off at the hotel to drop off the bottle of wine and take a moment to sit down. This turned into a short nap (even I closed my eyes for a bit, Brooke was out like a light). I also did some research about what we hadn't seen in Rothenburg yet. Doing so, I noticed that a lot of people commented that it is best to get the photo-op spot if you go really early in the morning before the tour buses show up. We agreed that that sounded like a good idea and decided to try tomorrow morning before we leave.

After our rest we walked over to the main square to look at the town hall. We noticed that you could climb up to the top of the bell tower (for a small fee) and it looked like a great view. We started the climb up to the top and it was a moderate wide staircase at the start. Towards the end it became very tight and steep. The very last hurdle was a really steep ladder and a small hole you had to clamber through to reach the top. Once we were up there the view was incredible! We could see all edges of the town and all the German red hatched roof tops. It was totally worth the climb and admission! Since it was not overly crowded we ended up taking a lot of time to enjoy the view and take pictures.

Once back down on street level we walked towards a portion of the town we hadn't seen yet. This included stopping to take pictures in front of a different tower since the sun was hitting it perfectly. We climbed back up onto the city wall and walked towards the north end of town. Our plan was to look for a place to eat in that area. This became quite an ordeal because we were both in an indecisive mood and couldn't agree on anything. We had been going hard all day and really needed to eat! Ended up walking pretty much all the way across town and eventually landed on a place called Roter Hahn. We shared a pork with spätzle and garlic cream sauce and some Nuremberg sausages with sauerkraut and potato pancakes, as well as a side of red cabbage and one beer. It was way too much food! Oops. I really had to step up to the plate and pack it in since our hotel did not have a mini fridge.

After eating so much, another quick nap was in order (or more so, time to digest). Back to the hotel we went to lie down before our evening plans. We were wanting to go on the Night Watchmen tour which we had heard about and knew it was highly rated.

The Night Watchmen tour runs every night at 8pm and starts from the town square where everyone meets. The tour guide is the last remaining Night Watchman of Rothenburg and he approached the crowd in full garb carrying his lantern and weapon. The tour consisted of the Watchman telling us stories of the history of Rothenburg, why the Night Watchmen existed, the dark Middle Ages, the prosperity of Rothenburg in the Renaissance and Reformation period, how the town fell into despair, and how the town was mostly spared during the 2nd world war. All throughout this he guided us through a few parts of Rothenburg. There were probably close to 200 people on the tour, but we were able to hear him quite well. It was very well done and we were quite pleased we went on the tour, highly recommend it!

Afterwards we finished off the night at the Landwehr Bräu restaurant for a drink of the local beer, our new favourite. (we also realized on Brooke's Fitbit app that the day before at Neuschwanstein we were 2 flights of stairs off from getting the medal for 100 flights of stairs in a day, darn!)

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