Mostly sunny – high temp 57ºF
Day two in Rothenburg ob der Tauber was our last day there and the day we would make a short drive (25 minutes) to the Burg Colmberg castle where we would spend the night.
The morning was slow, as most were these days. I went out and brought back danishes from the bakery that I found the previous morning. I returned and sat with Karen in the hotel drinking coffee. We then walked down the street to the Käthe Wohlfahrt store which turned out to be a never-ending Christmas store. We walked through, and were amazed… it was such a Winter Wonderland. We picked up a couple things and headed back to the hotel.
We returned to the hotel to collect the boys and went to walk to town and purchase our souvenirs. Aidan had picked a wall decoration of a shield with two swords. When we got to the store, it was closed. For some reason the store was closed on Fridays. Understandably, Aidan was very, very disappointed. We tried to figure out solutions, one of which included returning the following day after leaving Colmberg before heading to Munich.
We checked a few more stores and then looked in the window of a store near our hotel… we looked in the window because the store was closed for lunch. We spotted a couple sword/shield decoration, and Aidan found one he liked. We then waited for the store to reopen. While waited I asked Aidan to take a picture of Karen and me.
We had already checked out, so after we got the souvenirs, we got in our car and left Rothenberg ob der Tauber for Colmberg.
The drive was beautiful. It was a nice drive through the country; the forests, fields, and towns were beautiful.
It wasn’t long before we could see the castle on the side of a hill far ahead. It looked large, although by caste standards it was quite small. Before long, arrived in Colmberg and made the turn on to the side road that would take us to the castle.
After dropping off the family and our bags, I took the car to locate a parking space. Apparently the family received help taking the bags to the room since it was up two flights of stairs and there was no elevator. I found my way to the room and joined the family. The boys initially were interested in catching up on their screen time, so I decided to go and grab a beer. I had one that is made for the castle and took it out to the courtyard to enjoy it while overlooking the town
Karen came out to join me and together we walked around and explored the outside of the castle.
After our walk around the outside (which included a pause to look at the deer roaming the grounds and another to watch the sunset), we went back inside the castle where I bought a beer from a vending machine, and then explored the castle by myself. Karen and the boys would do their exploring later.
The castle was decorated with a lot of different types of furnishings, and it felt like a medieval lodge or estate.
Afterwards we went to the dining room for dinner which was the fanciest meal we had on the entire trip. It was traditional German fare and the boys did very good job eating a good amount considering it was out of the norm.
Later Karen, Dylan, and I spent some time reading in the library (at least that is what we called it), before returning to the room for the night.
