Romantic Road

We finished our Germany adventure by traveling up the so-called Romantic Road, a scenic byway that takes you through many quaint countryside villages and through major cities like Munich and Würzburg that we had already seen. Our first stop on this road was Wieskirche (Wies Church), a beautifully ornate rococo church in the foothills of the Alps. This was a pilgrimmage site because of a wooden sculpture of the Savior that apparently miraculously cried a few tears. It was built in the 18th century and, like many of the other places we visited this trip, is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.


After that, we continued on to Nördlingen, a medieval village sitting in the middle of a crater caused by a meteor that struck the Earth about 14 million years ago. We walked along the town wall that circled the town. We also climbed the 90 m tower of St. Georg's church, pictured below:


The tower provided us with these views of the countryside and the low ridge of the meteor crater in the distance:


After Nördlingen, we continued to Dinkelsbühl, another medieval city, dating to the 14th century. Here, we wandered around the city, visiting their churches and walking along a portion of their city wall. We loved the towers that provided gates into the old town part of the city.


We also really liked the cute half-timbered houses and were happy that in Dinkelsbühl, as opposed to many other villages we saw, the houses were painted with colors other than simple white.


We were getting cold and still had more road to travel before it got too much darker, so we packed up and headed off to our final destination (whose story will be told in a future post).