Christmas Market time, Part III

Next stop was Rothenberg ob der Tauber. It is highly recommended among the Frankfurt Consulate Community and I had been saving the trip to do when the whole family was here. The city's oldest part was built about 1000 years ago, and it is a walled city that has retained its entire wall.

We also planned to pick up a couple of holiday gifts at the homeland of Käthe Wohlfahrt, the company whose wooden Christmas items have graced pretty much every Christmas Market I have ever attended. The store can be a bit overwhelming, and it is sort of set like the Duty Free section in an airport - you're forced to walk through every single section from entry to exit - which can be annoying when a child needs the bathroom in the middle of the store and you have to wind your way through half the store just to get out the door (apparently no restrooms for customers there).

Between the bad weather and the too-short amount of time budgeted to this town, we didn't do half of the wandering we'd have liked to do. The Christmas market was darling. The highly recommended Night Watchman Tour, starting at 8pm, was everything we'd been told it would be. The man who runs it has a wonderful theatrical presence, even with a crowd of 50+ people he can be easily heard and the information he relays is interesting even to the kids. It was Alex's favorite part of the trip. We will absolutely make time to go back once more before we leave Germany.

Christmas Market time, Part II

The morning after our return from Köln we hopped in the car and headed down to Heidelberg. I had such high hopes for Heidelberg!!  BUT other than the castle, which is spectacular (I love a good ruin), there was nothing much for us. The multiple Christmas Markets were each tiny with little we hadn't already seen. Or eaten. I was so disappointed with Heidelberg I didn't even keep the glühwein mug.

 View of the castle

View from the castle

Heidelberg is a beautiful city. The bleak weather kept us from venturing up to the Philosopher's Way and the intermittent rain kept us from pulling the camera out at all most of the time.

For what I am sure were solid reasons at the time, I had booked us for two nights in Heidelberg - our only two-nighter of the trip. For the second day we ended up deciding to pop over to Speyer. In hindsight, this might have been a blessing in disguise because otherwise we would not have ventured over there and the city is darling, the Christmas Market is lovely, and the Technology Museum is absolutely worth the visit. It was by far the most expensive museum I have visited in Germany and we're talking about going back. It has an incredible collection of machinery - cars, boats, airplanes, helicopters, motorcycles, even a space shuttle - and visitors are able to wander around inside many of the exhibits. A major highlight was the submarine. This was the pouring-rainiest day of the entire trip so no photos of the market. Here's one of a piece of the Berlin Wall and mannequins in period costume. The light blue car in the bottom corner is a Trabi.

Christmas Market time, Part I

Terry was here for the kids' winter holiday (which is still ongoing, entering its third week, dear Lord will we survive this much togetherness?) To celebrate the last winter in Germany, we went a-Christmas Market-ing.

Stop One - Köln. Home of the only decent Ferris Wheel we saw the entire trip. In hindsight, I feel a little bad about only letting the kids go on once. The Chocolate Museum was decent although compared to other museums on the trip, pricey for what it was. A major highlight for the kids was, as usual, the bunk beds in the hotel room. Köln Cathedral never ceases to stop me in my tracks, although this was the first time I went inside.

On our way to Köln the train was switched out for another train that was exactly the same except the car numbers were different which means that no reservations were honored. Thankfully we were able to secure identical type seating to what we had paid for so no complaints. On the return trip, however, we got to the station too early so when we saw that train was also switched out I went to the DB travel office to see if we could switch to an earlier train given that our reservations didn't matter anyway. The lady first explained that I couldn't switch us to an earlier train because of the class of ticket we had purchased ... but ... we could depart on a train that left 30 minutes after our scheduled one, and arrived 30 minutes earlier and have the exact same type of seating to what we reserved. Customer Service!!!

* Tip to the wise: Frankfurt to Köln can be a 1 hour trip or a 2 hour trip, so pay attention when booking tickets.