Recharged.

Our last few days spent in Germany were wiled away in Rothenberg ob der Tauber and Frankfurt. The former is an incredibly well preserved medieval town, the latter a city surprisingly reminiscent of Portland that I will explore all over again with you tomorrow.
  
Rothenberg is a gorgeous town that we likened to an adult Disneyland. The houses (actually, all the buildings) were built in the beautiful Bavarian style and the streets were small and cobbled. The wall that surrounds the city was bombed in World War II and has since been rebuilt and honors those that donated with plaques inscribed with their name and hometown.

We spent two nights in Rothenberg and, for the most part, it was peaceful. If you were to visit, be prepared to either shop or be bored out of your mind. The walking tours suggested take up only a small part of the day and there really isn’t a whole lot to do outside of that. There were a lot of student groups (which we found out why later) and older couples strolling through the streets. I’m pretty sure we were the youngest ones there that were NOT part of a group.

The morning after we arrived, we were lunching on pizza (surprise?) and heard what sounded like cannons going off. And then marching type music. We finished our lunch and went to investigate. There was a parade! We had no idea at the time, but Rothenberg was hosting music ambassadors from the US.  We watched for a bit and then followed the parade route to find out there was a Volksfest happening outside the town wall.

Wandering through the Volkfest, we marveled at how similar it was to American fairs. Until we came to the beer garden.

Oh yes. A giant beer tent was set up, complete with German size steins and traditional music. We picked the most awesome of weekends to come to Rothenberg. We ended up visiting the beer garden twice that day as there really wasn’t much else to do in Rothenberg besides the Night Watchman tour, which we missed. We ended up wandering the walls the rest of the day and part of that night and took some pretty photos. I think I’m making it sound as if we were bored out of our minds, but I feel Rothenberg was the perfect town to stop and take a breath.