My Stardust Trail: Winnweiler & Arrival in Rothenberg

We said goodbye to the delightful Rhine Valley and hit the road for the world tour of Mike's old town. We passed his old bus stop and toured the neighborhood. I will skip over the turtle graveyard because I think the wounds are still too fresh. (The turtles had been.... relocated). We spent the morning around town and wandering through some parks. While out walking we spotted this headstone in the most up kept cemetery I have ever seen. We had no idea the Diehl's had relatives in Winnweiler.

After that quick stop, we were on our way to Rothenberg! The only city that still has its medieval wall still in tact. We weren't allowed to drive into the city upon arrival, so we went in search of parking outside the city. Apparently that is pretty normal. We snagged a great spot thanks to Amanda's watchful eye and parked. They were hosting a festival that weekend and parking was absolutely nuts. We decided it would be best to just leave our stuff in the car and meander around the city unburdened while we located our hotel. Probably one of our better ideas. We found the hotel, went back to the car and got our stuff, and then back to the hotel. From there we went to the Christmas Shop which is Rothenberg's famous store.

From Rothenberg, Germany

The picture is a little blury, but I think you can get the idea. It was an amazing store. :) After that we puttering through some other stores and then set out to try and find dinner. This was probably our least successful night with dinner. Because the aforementioned festival was going on, we had a hard time just getting hotel reservations and didn't think what that would mean for dinner. We found out however that it basically meant that every place we went to was booked. Of course it was rainy and getting cold as well, so combined with hunger, we were in really cheerful moods. We ended up at an imbiss outside a church who had not anticipated the crowd they got because many other people were in our same boat. Good to know we weren't alone. Anywho, we had some chow and then wandered around town a little more and went back to the hotel.

Even though dinner was not too impressive, our hotel had a very awesome vending machine. This vending machine would give you beer if you put a 2 Euro coin in it. :) It was actually decent beer too! Notice the bottle opener conveniently attached to said machine.

From Rothenberg, Germany

Back at our room we watched some really terrible German movie with a gas tanker explosion that was over dramatized and then we heard fireworks. We were able to watch them from our room out of the cold and in our PJs. They went all out for this fireworks display, nothing pansy about it.

The next morning we went downstairs for breakfast and found tables with names all over them. I thought once again we had run into the "you didn't make a reservation" issue again. Thankfully, everyone else knew better.

We dropped our stuff back at the car and toured the Criminal Museum and walked the wall around the town. It turned out the be a beautiful day with bright sunshine and warmer weather.