Christmas Markets take 2

Day 2 had us getting up and taking a stroll around Michelstadt to get an idea of what it looked like during the day. Very cute little German town. Had a nice big breakfast buffet at the hotel, then loaded up the car (I drove it up to the hotel so no more big long luggage lugging trips!) and set off to our next destination. Rothenburg ob der Tauber would be our home for the next several nights but we decided to drive past it and go to another little walled Medieval village, Dinkelsbuhel.

Dinkelsbuhel was adorable, surrounded by an old wall and ramparts, but obviously still a fully functioning town. There is a decent bit of tourism, which I always assess by the number of restaurants around the town square, but also lots of shops both kitschy and practical. We had a nice late lunch at the Golden Rose across from the church, since it was the only place still open after 2pm. Nothing to write home about but our first schnitzel :) Afterwards we strolled down the town's main street until we arrived at the Christmas Market which was held on the grounds of the town museum. A lovely little open-air village kind of feel, with hay on the ground, plenty of gluhwein and some great stalls. I especially enjoyed the fact that so many of the artisans were truly local; one woman I spoke with has a regular office job but spends her spare time all through the year makign christmas crafty things while watching TV, stockipiling them and selling them at the Christmas market. She said almost everyone comes from the village or within an hour or so drive. Mom and dad got their first mug for their "Christmas Market Gluhwein Mug" collection, and we picked up a couple knicknacks. We also happily bought some tickets from the local school children for their "Tombola" which is kind of like a raffle. We ended up leaving with a Christmas ornament made from ribbon and a Kermit the frog plush from an old Happy Meal. Gotta love people's ingenuity :)

It being December, it gets dark pretty early, so when we finally left around 6:30 it was dark and had been for quite some time. We made the 30 minute or so drive back up to Rothenburg and parked at the parking lot southeast of the old town wall. From there it was a very short walk to our hotel, the Goldenen Rose (same name as our lunch place!) which was a restaurant below with some rooms upstairs. Our "family apartment" was perfect! Very old, "grandma's house"y, with a large bedroom with two twin beds at the front, then a doorway (with a curtain instead of a door) into a bedroom with a large double bed (both bedrooms had wardrobes and a chair), then it continued into a little living area with some threadbare furniture and a lovely little Christmas tree complete with decorations. There was also a small television that we never really figured out how to use; the buttons seemed to at times control the channel, other times the volume, other times the brightness...and often it was stuck on one channel. But everything on German TV is in German anyway so it was oK :) The bathroom was off of this living room, which wasn't ideal but we made do. Nice deep bathtub, and oddly a gigantic painting of a naked man, shown from behind drying himself off. Given my tendency to book gay owned and gay friendly B&Bs when I travel my family giggled and said I had a way of picking them even when I didn't mean to :)

This was a spectacular value, something like 87 euros a night for the room.

The only bad thing about this place is it is VERY far out of the center of the action, if there is such at thing in Rothenburg. Which is nice for the peace and quiet but a little of a pain when you've got people in the party with bad knees, bad back, etc and dont relish walking 500 meters uphill to get to the center. It's waaay far south, which makes it kind of a pain to just run back to the room to get an extra scarf or something while you're shopping, or drop off your bags. But we made do.

We missed the Rothenburg Christmas market; it had closed up before we made it up to the center. So we window shopped in the closed stores for a while, then had a lovely dinner with the best potato soup in the history of the world at the hotel Glock. Found out that at least in this area, potato dumplings are made with mostly raw potato and they're sticky and taste like papier mache.

Nice day.