It was a nice drive from Munich to Nuremberg. However, the place that we chose to stay for the night in Nuremberg was a bit of a let down. Hotel Hamburg was located conveniently, with the metro station just a short walk. There is a shopping mall just opposite, and we parked our car just in front of the hotel. The room was old, and it was not very clean. As our room faced the shopping mall, we wanted to pull down the shutter (no curtains) before we sleep. However it was broken. As it was only for one night, we decided to ignore it. The breakfast next morning was fabulous so it sort of made up for it.

We came to Nuremberg for its Christmas Market, and we were not disappointed. It was massive, there were more variety of stalls, and even the downpour towards the end of the night could not dampen the Christmas spirit in the air.

The night ended when there was a sudden downpour. We decided to go back to the hotel. The next day, after a fabulous breakfast, it was time to drive back to Frankfurt, return the car, and take the trains to Sweden.

We arrived in Munich after a nice drive. Munich definitely feels much more alive than Frankfurt, there were quite a lot more to see compared to Frankfurt.

We stayed at ibis Munich City West, which was in a quiet part of Munich. However, as there is a U-Bahn station just outside the hotel, it was very convenient to get to where we wanted to go.

The traditional German beer house is a must. We went to the famous Hofbräuhaus.

Then it was another Christmas market in Munich.

The next day, we left Munich and drove to Nuremberg, where we experienced the last, and the best, Christmas market in Germany.

The next day we had one of the nicest breakfast for this trip, served by a really grumpy woman who was muttering in German throughout. Luckily for us, we did not understand a word!

We left the B&B, driving for the next few hours to our next destination Fussen. Truthfully, the medieval old town was nice to visit, but it quite actually quite creepy. The overcast weather did not help.

We headed for Neuschwanstein Castle, which is just a short distance from Fussen. This castle is world famous, and was the inspiration behind the Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. There is also another castle beside it, the Hohenschwangau Castle. That was the castle we went to first. After buying the tickets for the timing we chose, we took some photos at the base of the castles.

We then climbed up the hill to visit the Hohenschwangau Castle.

Unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the castle.

There are 3 ways to get up to Neuschwanstein Castle, by horse ride, by bus or walk. We decided to walk up. It was quite steep and tiring!

The bridge over the canyon is call the Marie’s Bridge (Marienbrücke) where it provides a vintage point to view the castle. Unfortunately as it was getting to closing time, we decided to skip it.

Again, photography was not allowed inside the castle until the end of the tour.

We drove to Fussen to stay the night in City Apart Hotel Fuessen. As it was dark and raining heavily, we spent quite a lot of time driving in circles, trying to find a way to get to the hotel. In the end, we had to park 2 blocks away. After enquiring at the front desk, we found out the road in front of the hotel is closed to traffic after a certain timing. It was inconvenient to drag our luggage from the car to the hotel, and because the hotel has no lifts, we had to drag our luggage up a few floors to our room. However, our room was spacious and comfortable. After a quick wash up, we found a nice German restaurant nearby, Madame Plüsch, to have German food for dinner. The food was quite good!

The next morning the rain had stopped, after a nice breakfast at the hotel, we decided to go to the Marie’s Bridge to view the castle instead of the planned drive to Munich. This is the advantage of having a free and easy holiday.

This time we decided to take the bus up as the bus stopped very close to the bridge.

After alighting from the bus, and walking a short distance, we finally reached the bridge. The view from the bridge justified our decision to drive to the castle again.

After the bridge, visitors usually walk to the castle. But as we already did the castle, we decided to wait for the bus to take us down the hill.

We then drove to Munich where we stayed for the next 2 nights.

The next part of the trip was traveling along the Romantic Road. We had a nice Turkish breakfast at Simit Sarayi, before having a really nice cup of coffee at this place Wackers Kaffee.

What we ate at the Turkish breakfast place:

Coffee at the cafe:

Fantastic coffee at this cafe that is full of character. We were walking around Frankfurt after coffee.

Then we went to collect our car, and we almost did not make it. It seems they will only hold the car reservation for us for only 2 hours, and we collected the car with 15 minutes to spare. Just when we thought we can finally get onto the road, we realised the car they gave us was a manual car, even though we specifically asked for automatic one. In the end, the only automatic car they have is a van. Since we did not want to delay any further, we took the van.

The fastest way traveling along the Romantic Road is to use the Autobahn. There are almost no speed limit on it, and together with the fact that this was the first time I was driving in right hand traffic, i.e. steering wheel is on the left hand side of the car, it was especially stressful initially. Driving at 180km/h and most cars still overtake you is not something that happens often in Singapore.

The starting point of the Romantic Road is the city Wurzburg. It is a beautiful city, and a wonderful place to start the Romantic Road trip. The first stop when we reach the city was the majestic Marienberg Fortress (German : Festung Marienberg). It is located on the left bank of the Main river in Wurzburg, and on top of a hill, providing a very nice view of the city. The fort itself was very quiet, and because it was winter and on top of a hill, we were freezing.

Then we drove to our hotel for the night, Mercure Hotel, though we had to make a few turns to find it. It was not a bad place to stay, the staff were friendly, the rooms were clean, tidy though quite small. After checking in and putting down our luggage, we walked across the famous Alte Mainbrücke (Old Bridge) on our way to the Christmas Market.

There is the bridge in the background as we walked along the river bank.

We finally reached the Christmas Market of Wurzburg. It feels less commercialised than the one we went to in Frankfurt and was almost as big.

Dinner was at the Nordsee restaurant, a chain of restaurants that serve really nice seafood. Besides, we were getting sick of the usual sausages that are found almost everywhere in Germany.

After dinner, it was time to head back to the hotel.

The next time, we had a quick breakfast at a small cafe before heading to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Wurzburg Residence. I am not sure why it is called a ‘Residence’ when it is clearly a palace. We reached before they were open, so we spent the time taking photos of its exterior.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos inside the Residence. However, it was definitely worth the visit. We then went back to the hotel to check out, before proceeding to our next location for a bit of shopping, the Wertheim Village Outlet.

It was not as good as the outlet shopping in Japan, but it was not too bad. Unfortunately, it was winter, and so it was selling mostly winter clothing. We managed to buy some additional winter wear, just in case, that was really cheap. It proved to be the correct decision in the subsequent days of this trip. We had this fantastic burger in one of the restaurant for lunch.

We then head off to our next location, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It is a very well-preserved German medieval old town, and was the inspiration behind the village in the 1940 Walt Disney movie Pinocchio. It was almost dark when we reached our stay for the night, Hotel Klingentor Garni. It was a nice bed and breakfast place, just a short walk to the medieval town. We found that the accommodation outside the medieval town tend to be cheaper than those within. The town is surrounded by old walls and towers. We wanted to walk around the walls but was told by the owner of the B&B not to do it after dark. We asked if it is because it was dangerous since there is no light, he said no and mysteriously left it at that. We eventually did walk along the walls for a short distance before we decided to move on to the town.

The famous shop in this town is the Käthe Wohlfahrt, which sells Christmas decorations and items the whole year round. The shop was brightly lighted, and was filled with every kind of Christmas decorations and toys.

Then we went to the Christmas market. It was not big and does not feel very commercialised.

We also tried the town’s food speciality, Schneeballen or Snowball. It tasted quite good.

Then we decided to head back to the B&B to retire for the night.

Planned this Europe trip to clear my leave in December 2014. Then unexpectedly, I found another new job, so have to ask for 3 weeks of leave immediately after starting work, which was approved.

The main objective of this trip was to see countries that we never have been to before, see snow, and hopefully, manage to catch the Northern Lights. Not only did we see lots of snow, caught the Northern Lights on two separate nights, we even had a little adventure. All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Flew in to Frankfurt on the 13th December night, and the plan was to rest the next day to prepare for the road trip in Germany. As it was going to be a one week road trip and this is the first time I am doing a left hand drive, I wanted to ensure I have enough rest before starting the road trip. I did not want the previous experience I had in Perth, where I flew in on a red-eye flight, collect the car, then drove for six hours all the while struggling to keep awake.

Frankfurt is primarily a business city, as such, it was functional. It lacked a certain character, a certain charm to it. However, there were still plenty of things to see, and do. We also encountered our first Christmas market, and though it felt very commercialised, we enjoyed it a lot.