Holiday Travels Part 1: Rothenberg and Nuremberg

Ryan's parents were our first visitors.  We had a jam packed trip planned and luckily had time to get everything done and still have some down time to relax.  This was a great time to come because we had two 4 day weekends due to Christmas and New Years.

Our first order of business during their stay were Christmas Markets.  We showed them the Kaiserslautern market, but our favorite was Deidesheim.  This is the German wine country about 25 minutes from our house.  We took the train and set out to explore this beautiful village full of charm and tasty treats! If you live in the K-town area, I highly recommend this market.

****1-10 Christmas Market Score: 

Deidesheim Market Score: 9.  Beautiful small town, close to the KMC area, great food, great wine, not too crowded, and wonderful atmosphere.  

That weekend, we headed out to Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  You may recall this quaint medieval town from a previous post.  It is the home of the Christmas market and one of the most famous.  Linda really wanted to check out this market as well as Nuremberg, so we made a weekend of it.  Unfortunately, we hit major traffic on our way to Rothenburg.  You just never know what its going to be like, so it shorted our time here quite a bit.  Once we parked, we hit up a local Italian place for lunch.  We even had our Amaretto Hot Chocolates to warm up.  We explored the village and all of the market.  We walked the medieval wall, saw the Church, and palace Garden.

****1-10 Christmas Market Score: 

Rothenburg Market Score: 9.  Beautiful Medieval town, lots to see if you get sick of the market, great food, great wine, lovely booths, good amount of history, not too crowded, and wonderful atmosphere.  

The weather then took a huge turn for the worse and we were getting smothered with rain.  We decided to hit the road and venture on to Nuremberg.  We checked into our hotel, and decided to find food and see the market at night.  Markets are fun during the day, but part of the charm and atmosphere is seeing them at night, with all the music and lights!  We walked through the Castle grounds and stopped to take in the view and look at lights.  The market was PACKED! I mean crazy wall to wall amounts of people.  That takes a lot of the fun out of a market, but at the same time Nuremberg is one of the biggest and most popular markets.  That makes it a MUST SEE/DO while in Germany and means you just grin and bear it.  We ate a local pub and had the traditional potato, bratwurst, and beer dinner, then wandered through the market.  It was a little crazy trying to get close to the stage to hear the awesome choir that was performing, but we did it.  As crazy as it was a night, it was so fun to see it all.

The next morning we headed back downtown for breakfast.  We found a little bakery and had quiche and coffee.  The market was just opening and completely free of people! We took that time to really look at all the booths and merchandise and sip some Eierpunsch and Gluhwein along the way.  We popped into some Churches, walked through the Castle grounds, and checked out lots of the fun parts of town.  Afterwards, we decided to visit the Dokumentation Center in Nuremberg for some Nazi history and a view of the Parade Grounds.  Ryan and I had visited this before on our European vacation several years ago, so we wanted to show this little gem to his parents.

It was a great weekend seeing charming and historical Germany and hopefully we will get to see some more markets next year.

****1-10 Christmas Market Score: 

Nuremberg Market Score: 8.  Beautiful town, lots to see if you get sick of the market, great food, great wine, lovely booths, good amount of history, very crowded, hard to find restaurants that aren't packed.