Liechtenstein and Rothenburg

We tried to pack as much into the last few days as possible, so today for our last day with our car we took a 2.5 hour road trip into Liechtenstein. When else would we get the chance to visit this tiny country? After researching things to do, I decided the easiest thing would be to travel right over the border to the small village of Schellenberg, which holds the ruins of two castles—Obere Burg (upper castle) and Untere Burg (lower castle). We visited Obere Burg, which is just about five minutes across the border of Liechtenstein. On the way there we saw some great views of the landscape and cows grazing right beside the road. In the parking area there were goats right beside the car, and Willow thought they were so cute!

The best part of the whole day for the kids was running around and exploring the castle ruins. They went over the troll bridge, climbed over the rocks, and ran around the maze of ruins. This was lots of fun, and I am sure we could have spent half a day here. We were the only ones there, so the kids could run, play, and yell with no one else around. There were still clouds, but the sun was peaking out and we didn’t need our jackets for the first time in a week! After a week of bad, cold, rainy weather, it was so nice to see the sunshine again.

I am not sure if we were supposed to, but JonPaul climbed up to the top of the castle by the flag. I sure was nervous because it was a long way up! The kids thought it was awesome though and were cheering the entire time.

Since JonPaul got to climb the castle, the kids wanted their turn too. They didn’t get to climb as high of course, but it was still so exciting for them.

Next they played “protect the castle”. Here they were marching around the wall keeping the castle safe from the trolls living under the bridge. There was this huge log that the kids held up to help with the protection of the castle. Across the way there was a square cutout in the trees, and it made a nice frame for a picture of the kids.

We were only in Liechtenstein for an hour and a half, but it was a lot of fun and I am glad we made the trip. From here we drove 3.5 hours up to the town of Rothenburg ob der tauber, a small town on the Romantic Road. This is one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Germany, and supposedly toward the end of WWII the Germans turned it over to the Allies instead of having it bombed. The first thing we did was walk up to the top of the old town walls and look around the town from the top. The walls surround the town with 42 towers along the way. From the walls you can see the top of the houses within the town and it really makes it apparent how old many of these houses are. Willow wanted to be the tour guide, so she led us across the wall for most of the time.

After walking the walls, we walked a little through the town. We saw several interesting things. Some of the tour guides use these old fashioned cars to give city tours, because we saw a few during our walk through the city. The blog cuts off the top and bottom (or left and right on horizontal pictures), so sometimes you don’t get the complete view of the picture. I really like this picture of the old bike with the flowers even though the top of the church steeple has been cut off. I think the town is usually much busier, but I was able to get some very lovely pictures of the deserted streets and alleyways. Zoey really liked the bottle sculpture!

At several of the bakeries they sold these fried dough balls called Tauberkugel. The one on the left is covered in chocolate and the one on the right with cinnamon and sugar. They were pretty good, but really crunchy and the kids didn’t like them much.

We walked over to the Burggaten, which is outside a large tower and had lots of green space and great views of the surrounding countryside. Zoey really liked the creepy face that was looking down over the entrance to the really thick tunnel.

I took a lot of pictures of the colorful houses and streets. I just couldn’t get enough of these nearly empty streets that looked like we just stepped into a medieval fairytale. Ronin really liked the pretzel sign that was above the chocolaterie.

Although not a planned stop, we walked by the museum of Crime and Punishment. The kids really wanted to go in, and we did have some time before it closed so we went into this museum. It was really interesting albeit completely morbid and more than a little creepy. I was worried the kids would be scared, but they were fascinated.

We had to rush through the museum as we were there right at closing time, but JonPaul and I could have stayed for several more hours reading all the signs (or at least the ones that were in English). Ronin and Zoey would have liked to stay for more time too, but there was a lot on the medieval justice system and the government processes that the kids just didn’t understand.

The museum had a second building that was about witches (and all in German so we couldn’t understand the write ups) and had lots of taxidermies that the kids thought were totally cool. I pointed out the brown camouflage coat to Ronin and asked him if he knew what it was for, and he said, “yeah it’s Harry Potter’s special cloak”. This was said in the most know-it-all voice imaginable, and it was hilarious that he was just positive this was Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility.

The iconic picture of Rothenburg is the view of the Plonlein, an intersection with a half-timbered building dividing the streets to the Siebers tower and the lower Kobolzeller tower. This really was a pretty spot, and the first time we walked by it was practically empty; when we went later in the day with better light there were more people there and it was more crowded.

We went into quite a few stores, and one sold knives, pens, and all things about medieval princesses and knights. They sold real quill pens and ink, and had a big book to practice writing using the quill pen. Everyone needed a turn writing their name with the quill, even Willow!

We ate dinner at a really cute restaurant right in the town square. From here we got back to our car and then drove to Nuremberg, where we checked into our last hotel and returned our car. Our month-long travels are almost over, but we will be having many more adventures in Hungary.