EXPLORING WURZBURG & ROTHENBURG

Thursday, March 21, 1996 The Romantic Road

Wurzburg was shattered by bombing at the end of WW II, but has been completely restored. It is a wonderful city full of seemingly very well maintained old buildings. We checked out of the hotel and drove to two different museums and a church. The first one was called The Residenz which was the home of the Bishop, very fancy with lots of gold leaf. My oldest son-in-law was born in Wurzburg as his father was stationed here after WW II.

Next we explored a church which had life-size stations of the cross. They were located on the side of the mountain with three stations on each level. The church was called Kappele and was built about 1748. It is one of the many pilgrimage churches built in Germany by Neumann.

The second museum was called the Fortress Marienberg . It wasn’t as interesting as The Residenz except in the architecture...there is a great wall surrounding the entire structure. There was a beautiful church inside of the fortress; recently redone and was basically a cool blue in color. The well was extremely deep and there was a very tall bell tower in the center.

Time to hit the road.....we headed south on the Romantic Road and spent about two hours, and three stops for directions, to find our way out of the city. Finally, we were on our way south and had lunch in the car as we drove; I made sandwiches from the leftovers from last night’s dinner working with Barbara’s pocket knife and a plastic bag as the table. We finally arrived in Rothenburg. A walled city that has been preserved as the finest medieval city of Europe.

We checked into the Hotel-Gasthof Schranne which was about a block from the center of the city. We found this hotel by driving around and had them call and cancel the reservation that we’d set up from Wurzburg with Best Western. We had to park our car behind the hotel and go in and out through the kitchen as no cars are allowed on the streets at night. The rain started just as we were taking our bags inside the hotel, by way of the kitchen . We walked around the town and had a delightful dinner at an Inn around the corner called Kans Karl Frei which also had a bakery. We ordered Goulashsuepe, which is a Hungarian chili soup with paprika. That plus German beer made us ready for pie from the bakery for dessert.

A final stroll all around the town with our umbrella due to the soft rain that kept falling. We found a delightful hotel that we’d love to stay at on our next trip called the Burg-Hotel. (Yes, on a trip in 1999 we did stay at this hotel and enjoyed it very much.) It had a doll house in the lobby that was built into a cabinet in the wall plus wonderful views of the valley below the walled city from the windows of the rooms. We considered switching hotels but they didn’t have any rooms available. We finally ended up at the local McDonalds for a hot chocolate treat with french fries before heading home to the hotel, CNN and bed.