Our plan had been to get up fairly early this morning so that we could go out and take photos in the sunshine. It was not to be the case, at least as far as the sunshine was to go. I woke up at about 6:45 AM, and looked out the window to see some clear skies, but a lot of clouds. I let Stephanie sleep in as I worked on updating the blog. We thought the sun would come out later in the morning, but it did not happen. It was disappointing, especially after seeing the clear skies yesterday afternoon, thinking it would carry over into today.
Once we finally got up and took showers, we went to breakfast at the hotel restaurant which was very good. It was served differently, there was no buffet, but they brought each table a basket of different breads, and a plate of cheeses and meats. It is still different to see that breakfast in Germany is similar to what we would do for a ham and cheese sandwich in the US. They did offer to cook different types of eggs, but we stayed with the typical German food. They also served some fresh yogurt, which was already on the table when we arrived in the breakfast room.
Rothenburg City Gate
We finished our breakfast, and went back to the room to get ready for going out for some additional exploring in Rothenburg, even with the cloud cover. Our plan was to go out for about an hour and a half, and then come back to the room to get ready for the 11:00 AM check out time.
We still planned on going back out into the town even after we checked out, putting all of our baggage in the car in the hotel lot while we went back out. It was disappointing that we got no sunshine, we have been in Rothenburg for almost 4 days now, and we have only had about 4 hours of sunshine at best.
Buildings in Rothenburg
We discussed calling this town Rainenburg, or Cloudenburg, it was not what we had hoped for. The weather was definitely teasing us, it would be cloudy, then the sun would appear for about 10 minutes, and we would get our hopes up, then the clouds would return.
We purchased a couple of items from the stores, one was a Christmas ornament, the other was a small ceramic reproduction of our Hotel, the Gasthof Goldener Greifen. Since the weather was not coopering, we decided to just go ahead and drive over to Frankfurt, about 2 hours away.
Stephanie In The Window The Gasthof goldener Greifen
Before we started to Frankfurt, we drove the car down to the Tauber River to see a famous church and the bridge over the river, both within sight of Rothenburg We had to park on the road, and walk to the church, but it was a scenic walk through the autumn trees.
Bridge Over The River Tauber
We then headed out in the direction of another small town, mainly to see some of the large wind powered turbines we had seen in the distance. They are so large, that even though we thought we were close, we were not. It was just too far away, so we turned around and headed back toward Rothenburg, since it was on the way to Frankfurt. The entire route to Frankfurt was on the Autobahn, so we knew it would not take too long to get there.
Our VW Polo Rental Car
The Autobahn was another experience in our underpowered VW Polo. It is not so much that the car won’t go fast enough, more that it will not accelerate very well when having to pass a slow moving truck when you happen to get stuck behind one. That is where the larger engine cars have it made, they can pull out and accelerate to pass without having to anticipate as far in advance.
Stephanie On The Walking Trail Near Rothenburg
Most of this route, we only went about 150 kph maximum, which is about 93 mph. Even at that speed, at times, we were passed like we were standing still. We had not thought about the speeds we had driven with the other car, but at one time, we were going about 170 kph, which was about 105 mph. Even then, we were passed many times going at that speed.
We made it to the hotel near the Frankfurt Airport at about 2:00 PM. We checked into the Hotel IBIS and then went to find some lunch. We ended going to a nearby grocery store where we got some freshly made sandwiches with roasted pork and fried pork. We carried them back to the hotel and ate in the room. They just do not have many stores or much to see around the airport, at least not where we were staying this time, nor the different hotel we stayed at last time when we flew out of Frankfurt.
We proceeded to unpack our luggage, refolded all of our clothes, and repacked them. It was a good exercise, we gained a lot of space, not having done that extensive of a repacking effort since we had left home over three weeks ago. It took us about an hour and a half, but we got everything packed, and were surprised to see how much space we had. Hopefully, we won’t have a weight problem since we were under the limit by about 5 pounds per bag on the way over, and we did not add that much, mainly some paper weight for maps and brochures. We had some offsets in weight, two small containers of VO are gone, and some of our toiletries are expended.
The repacking went so well, it seemed like we had less in our suitcases, but it was probably due to the better packing that we could do in the hotel, and not the lesser packing effort that was required to do just for travelling between cities.
Once that was complete, we did an online check in for the flights tomorrow. The only problem was that we needed to print our boarding passes. The hotel had a PC and printer setup downstairs, but it did not have the capability to receive a memory stick to print our PDF boarding pass file. I asked at the front desk, and they were able to print out our boarding passes on their printer.
We headed back to the room to relax, have some wine, and make some phone calls on iCall (Great program). It only gives you five minutes of free call time, but if you tell everyone the call will end in 5 minutes, they will anticipate your calling back after each 5 minute segment. It works really well. There is no limit to the number of calls, just the duration of each call.
Well, it is time to log off for the actual trip, we will be heading out early tomorrow morning for our 9:20 AM flight. We have to drop off our rental car, and then board our flight. It has been a good trip, but tiring. We will post some trip “after thoughts” in an Epilogue post in a few days, explaining some learning experiences, giving insights, and hopefully, some reflective moments on the trip.