Rothenburg

So the exciting pat of being in Rothenburg this past weekend was that they were having this great festival. Re-enactors where cordoned off in sections of the city, protected behind ropes so they could "re-enact" I suppose, without the public intruding too much, but they were also walking around and mingling with tourists, getting their photos taken, etc. One of the large main streets had a huge section down the middle of it cordoned off for one group called the 1525 group. It was quite a long section of street, so they had several different activities going on along the length of the street. Yesterday's photos of the guys and the littlest Re-enactor were along that section of street, as were these guys- apparently keepers of the Torture Tools:

As we came to the end of the street, we came to edge of the town walls & what we referred to as the "Castle Gardens", although to be truthful, if there was a castle, I'm not sure where it was. The gardens had a grand entrance from the town:
Olivia loved the big grassy area for running, she had been so patiently cooped up in the stroller for quite some time, so she appreciated being able to get out and run arond. Lambie needed a bit of exercise too...
The view from the "castle gardens" was just beautiful. You could look back on the town to the left, through the countryside straight ahead and to the right. It was really a perfect time of year as everything was just electric green.
Helene & Olivia:
These kids were from re-enactor families, I'm not sure what they were selling, but they were trying to offer us something...I passed it by as the Euro is way too strong against the dollar these days for me to think about doing much shopping...

Always treasures to find when you are outside...

This was an interesting little door. We tried to imagine where it went, but none of our visions were too appealing. I'm certain that I would not have wanted to explore it any more in 1525, than I would today...

This church on the end of town was a pretty quiet area. There was another church located directly in the main square, although for a change, I didn't go in either of them. The last time I was touring in Germany was in Bamburg 2 years ago, in search of the castle my friend & I ended up exploring 4 churches. Seriously, the second and third times we actually thought we had found the castle, until we walked inside only to discover, no, another church. By the third one we sat down & looked at the map, only to discover the church was 2 miles outside of town. By the fourth one, we saw it and just looked at each other and said, 'oh what the heck, we aren't getting to the castle anyway...' Ironically I think the last one was the most charming of them all. The others were beautiful, but the last one was small and quiet with only a few people, but plenty of charm.The entrance back into the main street section, I think the church formed a sort of secondary wall, as we actually had to walk back in through the wall again to get to the town. You can see the stairs cross in front of the tower. You can walk up stairs at various parts of the wall and walk at least most of the way around the town up on the wall. It gets quite narrow in some areas, and the stairs to get up are quite steep in some areas, but it's a wonderful view to admire the city from up on the wall.

This business looks an awful lot like the restaurant we ate lunch in, but it is a different building. I love the use of red & green on the shutters and wall colors. At the peak of the building you can still see the pulley wheel used to haul things to the top floors. Many buildings in Rothenburg still have these.

One of my favorite types of windows in Europe- it's stained glass although I'm sure it must have some special name. I call these windows "bottle bottom windows", because they remind me of the bottoms of wine bottles...

I have no idea what this says- but I can read 1535. whatever it is...it happened in 1535. Fantastic.