Rothenburg ob der Tauber

We drove north from Hohenschwangau on our way to Rothenburg 175 miles away. We drove the Romantic Road rather than the A7 Autobahn, just out of curiosity as it passes through some small towns we'd not have seen otherwise including Landsberg  am Lech where Hitler was imprisoned in 1924.

Avoiding the A7 added an hour to our drive and kept our speed down to 80 mph maximum as the road is often 2 lanes wide and gets a lot of truck traffic.

Rothenburg was one of this places unknown to us until we saw a Rick Steves TV show in 2002.

Since that first visit, which we are looking at now, we have been back twice. We have always stayed at the same hotel-the Burg Hotel which I picked out online using TripAdvisor.

Rothenburg was bombed from the air in March 1945 and after the war was rebuilt as it had been. It looks like a movie set and it doesn't take long to fall for it's quiet charm. It's crowded with daytrippers during the day, coming in by rail, car or tour bus but once they leave in the early evening the town would be ours to explore and savor in peace.

It's a medieval walled town and when I first drove in through one of the town gates I immediately had to reverse out again as a tour bus was coming through. Then I drove slowly on cobbled streets, through the town square and to the Burg Hotel which is built against the town wall. I found a parking spot on the street near the hotel. They do have a small indoor garage but it's tight and dark in there.

Here I am in front of the hotel....

On that first visit we couldn't book the Bavarian Suite on the 2nd floor with it's view down into the valley below. Instead we were on the ground floor in another suite with less eye-candy appeal.
We have booked the Bavarian Suite each time since...

This is our ground floor room at the back of the hotel with a view over the garden

The ornate four poster bed

And a small part part of the living room

Basic accommodations but we are not planning to be in the rooms much. We have two days to spend here and we didn't arrive until after 3 pm.

Here's the back of the hotel, showing the town wall

It was time to get out and explore the streets of Rothenburg. The town with only 11,000 inhabitants is small enough to explore entirely on foot. We were soon in the town square with all the other tourists.

Guided tour group

Town hall clock

So much beauty here!

Even the McDonald's stays in character with the town

Next up, well get a bird's eye view from the church bell tower shown below...

Schloss Neuschwanstein

As I recall there was no flash photography allowed inside the castle and as I didn't have a Digital DSLR camera back then I have no good photos to show, except some taken of the outside countryside through an open window. The  interior shots you'll see were taken from the Wikipedia entry on the castle.

The rooms were dark due to the narrow windows and heavy tapestries on the walls. Furniture was ornately carved in an "over-thetop, I'm the King after all style". The King spent little time living in the castle between 1884 when it was furnished (but all the building not completed until 1892) and June 1886 when he drowned in a lake nearby under mysterious circumstances.

Here's where you enter the castle-the Gatehouse

Waiting to go in for our short tour...as the castle gets up to 6,000 visitors a day in small guided tour groups, tours are under 45 minutes and you are kept moving along.

The hallways are flooded with light

The Royal Bedroom

Dining room

The Study

Drawing Room

This next one is the "Singer's Hall" a reference to the Wagner opera Tannhauser...



The Throne Room

Throne Room detail

I took a couple photos from the hallway windows...here are the Austrian Alps in the distance. it would be 5 years until our first Austrian vacation....

Looking over the rooftops of Hohenschwangau

As it's all downhill from here we decide to walk back down to the village and take one last look over our shoulders at the castle...

After 20 minutes or so we are back to ground level and ready to pay a quick visit to the other castle-Hohenschwangau the summer home of King Ludwig II...yes that's our hotel in the bottom right hand corner.

Now for lovers of Wagner music this is the better of the two castles to visit. Reason being that Wagner actually stayed here and the King had a room set aside for him. So there's a piano that Wagner used to play the King what he had been writing or whatever the King asked to hear from his favorite operas. One of the most interesting rooms is the dining room where the large banquet table could be lowered to the kitchen below where the food would be added to the plates and bowls and then hoisted back up to the diners without footmen getting in the way of the guests.

This castle is also more of a home and less garish and ornate in the interiors, which appeals to me.

The day is wearing on and it's now approaching noon and we have a long drive ahead. We just give ourselves time to walk through the village and down to the lakeside....

We pack our luggage in the hotel and prepare for today's drive up the Romantic Road to our next stop-our first visit to Rothenburg. Down in the street the car is waiting...

Tuesday morning, Hohenschwangau

A good night's sleep. Not a sound outside until  was awoken by the sound of horse's hooves.....

I looked out the side window....looks like a beautiful morning for castle visiting

Time to get showered and dressed and go down to breakfast. There was an ornate wood carving of King Ludwig II with swans at his feet. At the time of his meeting Wagner his favorite opera was Lohengrin, which features a "swan" (actually a young Prince turned into one by a sorceress). If you want a potted history of Wagner and Ludwig there is a film by Britain's Tony Palmer starring Richard Burton (in a star-studded European cast) that is worth a look. It's about 9 hours long but you can take a break every hour or so. It's (not surprisingly) called "Wagner".

We ate in this room with a view of the castle....

After a fine German breakfast of meats, breads and cheeses, washed down with great coffee, it was time to step outside and enjoy that sunshine!

Looking back at Hotel Muller- our side view was from the two top right windows under the roof line.

We had timed tickets for a guided tour in English for Neuschawanstein as you can't just walk in and most around by yourself. This way you are kept moving and avoid being in a crowd.
You can walk up the long steep hill or pay for a ride in a horse and carriage which you share with other tourists. We're not walking up!

This would be our view on the way up the steep hill

Our driver

The driver takes us as far as he can and we walk the rest, enjoying the fresh morning air and the scent from the pine trees.

We say aufweidersehen to the horses

We're walking uphill and getting our first close-up look at the castle (Schloss in German) Of course part of it is being renovated....

Next up....the castle.

Hotel Muller

We've had a very pleasant morning and afternoon driving leisurely around the country roads of Bavaria. Now we have arrived at our hotel in Hohenschwangau, the village that hosts two of King Ludwig II's castles;  Schloss Hohenschwangau where he grew up and Neuschwanstein which he had built after he became King in 1864 at age 18, the same year he came to his favorite Opera composer Richard Wagner's financial rescue.

So the car gets to relax on the street in front of the hotel. You can see Neuschwanstein castle in the distance, top center of the photo.

No more driving today.  We checked into Hotel Muller and to our room which had a balcony looking at the castle and windows on two sides. This was at a time when I shot more video that photos and as the video back then was not on a digital format I can't share interior room shots with you. We did convert them to DVDs for our own use at home so I guess if you want to see them you'll have to come over and visit....suffice to say the room was large and comfortable with a huge well-appointed bathroom and if ever in the future we visit here again we'll stay at the Muller. It was impossible to not just stand on the balcony in the sun and look up at the castle.....

The sun is getting low now and we have "magic light"

Losing the light

Dinner in the hotel restaurant was excellent-simple German cooking, meat (pork roulade) and potatoes washed down with huge steins of beer in a cosy atmosphere, with a view of the castle floodlit at night.
Cars were going up the steep incline for a private event happening up there. Tomorrow we would take a carriage ride up. Today's daytrippers had left via train and motor coach  and Hohenschwangau was a very peaceful place once again.

A heavy German dinner followed by a walk around the quiet village without meeting a soul...such a relaxed place to be. Tomorrow we would visit two castles and then set off an a long drive to the medieval town of Rothenburg. A busy day lay ahead so an early night was a good idea.

Hohenschwangau was quiet and still, so a good night's sleep was guaranteed.