OCTOBER 2020
Hielke and I made a road trip with a retro VW Van at the beginning of August. I will write more about that crazy experience on a later blog, but first I want to give a small update regarding our first stop in lovely Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Rothenburg is located in Bavaria and is not well known outside of Germany. As we couldn’t travel very far during the pandemic, this year was the perfect year to bring a visit to Germany and thus to Rothenburg! I would highly recommend to visit this gorgeous city and I hope to convince you with the pictures we have taken!
Where we stayed
As we were traveling with a van, we didn’t stay in a hotel but we stayed at a camping. I chose the appropriately called camping Tauberromantik, where we could stay the night for € 27 per night including electricity during high season. This is one of the cleanest campings I have ever been and they took COVID procedures very seriously, without being annoying. There were plenty of showers and a small store and bakery where you could get fresh bread and coffee at a decent price. I particularly enjoyed that you could get on and off the camping grounds freely and safely by entering a gate. We encountered some other campings that closed off until late in the morning, so you could not leave early if necessary. Luckily, everyone on the camping was pretty quiet and we were able to get two good nights of sleep! The camping Tauberromantik is located a 15 minutes’ walk outside of the old city center, but you do have to walk up a hill to get to the town.
Things to do in Rothenburg
Rothenburg has a beautiful old city center, that is located within city walls. You can enter the old town via several gates, some adorned with amazing clock towers. Rothenburg is full of colorful, traditional timber framed buildings. Because it is a small town that seems to live on tourism, the buildings are extremely well kept, making it very pleasing to the eyes. We made sure to be within the walls around 10AM so we would have the best photo opportunities, but I am sure you can take some decent pictures later in the day if you have a little patience.
Another thing that I highly recommend is to take a walk on the old city walls. There are several towers on which you can enter the town walls. This definitely makes for a fun walk and you can take great pictures of the old town.
If you love Christmas, Rothenburg is the place to be year-round as you will find several Christmas stores in town. Lots of these stores sell the little Christmas houses that are inspired by the town itself. Käthe Wohlfahrt is the largest and most famous store, where you can find incredibly bizar Christmas decorations that you must check out. The store is beautifully decorated, though extremely pricy, so I bought a little Christmas gift in a different store. Käthe Wohlfahrt also has a little Christmas museum, which wasn’t open due to COVID which we visited. I cannot even imagine how pretty the town must be during Christmas time and I would love to go back someday for the Christmas markets!
The gastronomy in Rothenburg was surprisingly good. There is quite a range of different sorts of restaurants, but you just have to visit a traditional Brauhaus or Stube as it goes perfectly with the scene. I usually don’t love German food, but as I was pregnant it was perfect as I had plenty of choice. I was even able to try different sorts of nonalcoholic beer! Reichsküchenmeister had a big terrace and the food was really tasty.
Near the large Christmas stores you can also find a little covered flea market, I love browsing in these kind of places and if you do too, I would recommend to check it out.
