This morning we enjoyed (what we think was) a traditional German breakfast at our hotel, consisting of cold cuts, cheese, crudite, bread, and coffee before heading out to walk through Rick Steves’ audio tour of old town Rothenburg. Rothenburg is known for its medieval quaintness and the old town is as full of charm by light of day as it was last night with its festive Christmas lighting. It’s a very small old town, but we enjoyed checking out the city wall and guard towers, beautiful church (with a carved wooden alter holding a relic that’s said to contain a drop of Christ’s blood), and the market square with its glockenspiel.

In case you’re wondering what’s happening here in the picture below, the story goes: In 1631, the town was invaded by the Count of Tilly (dude on the left) and the Mayor (guy on the right) gave the Count some wine to try to negotiate with him. The Count, softened by the wine, told the Mayor he’d spare the city if the Mayor could drink a three liter tankard of wine in one long gulp. The Mayor did so, the town was saved, and he became a hero. The story is mostly fiction – apparently, the invasion happened but the epic wine drinking did not. Nevertheless, the moral of the story is that we should all be practicing this skill – because we may find we are just the hero our city needs.

It was rainy this morning and though it was technically a little warmer, the wind was very strong and gusty. We had quite a challenge keeping our umbrellas from inverting in the intermittent gusts. It was not a good day for selfies (Exhibit: Hair). For demonstrative purposes, I snapped this one after coming out of the year-round Christmas store, Kathe Wohlfahrt.

While we’re on the topic of the Kathe Wohlfahrt store, I’d like to share a pro-tip. If you’re there during advent, definitely walk through the Christmas market first and keep an eye on prices. We saw a lot of the same (or equivalent) products in the market for a fraction of the price as in the Christmas store. The store is still interesting to walk through – and has more selection than what’s in the market – but if you can find what you’re looking for in the market, get it there instead. We’ve been eyeing wooden Christmas pyramids to bring back with us and found one for €45 in the market that would have cost us around €100 – 200 in the store. The gentleman from whom we bought our Christmas pyramid had his stand set up directly across the street from the store and when I mentioned his strategic choice for a location, he smiled shyly and said “It’s a good spot for me.”

After finishing up in Rothenburg, we got back on the autobahn to head for Füssen for the night. There was a pretty ugly accident on the autobahn, which made the 2.5 hour drive more like 3 – 3.5 hours. Note: Germany does this really cool thing where people actually MOVE OUT OF THE WAY for emergency vehicles. We should think about implementing that in the U.S. (I’m joking of course – that would never catch on in the states.) We finally made it to Füssen, checked into our hotel, and found a quiet spot for dinner before retiring for the evening.