Germany Roadtrip - Day 6

Sadly, we had to leave Rothenburg on this day, but the hotel even had breakfast early so we could leave at the time we wanted. As a side note, the breakfast at the hotel was amazing and it was fun to have breakfast prepared for us (we're usually choose to save money by not getting hotel breakfast). We got our stuff into the car and headed north to Wurzburg, which is one of the start points for the Romantic Road. We only had the morning to spend there, so we started out by touring the Residenz (for those of you paying attention to the palace names, there is also a Residenz palace in Munich that we saw as well). We got to park right outside the front of the palace, which was a first for us (normally we never find the close parking lot). And we were impressed at the size of the palace. Most of the palace was destroyed during the last few weeks of WWII when Wurzburg was bombed. A few very impressive rooms were saved though, and they saved all the furniture and tapestries by moving them to a safe place prior to the bombings. The palace still had a lot to see though, and they have managed to reconstruct most of the rooms. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos in the building and my camera died that morning (it's a shame when you run out of batteries) - so I'm a little lighter than normal on photos for this post.

We got into the palace right away, bought our tickets, and proceeded to take a self-tour through one wing of the palace. We were a little frustrated that they didn't mention that there were free guided tours that you had to take for the other wing of the palace, so we ended up wasting about an hour waiting for another tour. It wasn't a total loss because we went out to the gardens for a while. However, at one point we did think it was a total loss because they almost didn't let us back into the palace in time for our tour (they locked the doors and posted a sign that the palace was too congested). I'm glad they opened the doors in time so we could take our tour, and we also realized that our stroller was locked inside (they made us leave it while we toured the palace and we had left it there since we were coming back for another tour). Once we started our free guided tour, Carsten fell asleep in the Ergo carrier for the duration of the tour (about 45 min). It was pretty early for a nap for him (11:00 am), but I did get to enjoy and listen to the tour while he was sleeping, which was nice :). He ended up sleeping for about an hour in total, which is the longest non-crib nap he's taken in a while. The nicer part of the palace was covered in this tour, so I'm glad we made the extra effort to take the tour. Here's a couple of photos from the Wurzburg Residenz:

The middle portion of the Wurzburg.

Sleeping kiddo.

He woke up right after this photo.

Group shot with timer. 

Back of the Residenz.

Carsten likes to touch and smell flowers.

I promise that he didn't fall over.

 We wanted to find some lunch before we headed out for about a 3 hr drive in the afternoon, so we wandered into the old town of Wurzburg where we found some excellent sandwiches and got to see two churches. The first church was a Jesuit church, and it had nice mix of traditional and modern art paintings inside, which I've never seen before. Also, Carsten managed to fall into a very old (1532) probably very gold (aka valuable) object which made him cry a lot. Fortunately, as far as we could tell, neither he nor the expensive golden object were damaged. Here's a few photos of the churches in the old town of Wurzburg:

Jesuit church

modern paintings mixed with traditional - it worked pretty well :).

The large golden candlestick (taller than me) was what Carsten fell into.

Gorgous church and square.

Mom and Dad inside the church.

Carsten found a concrete chair to sit in.

We headed on the road to Fussen, which was about a 3 hr trip. Carsten did great and even helped my mom wake up (she kept dozing off) by handing her trucks until she woke up. Carsten had a lot of fun playing with my Mom during the trip to Fussen (see photo below).

Mom dozing. Sorry Mom, had to post it :).

Carsten having fun with my Mom.

When we were close to our destination, we were greeted by the Bavarian Alps. They were pretty, and the best part is that we could see them very nicely from where we were staying :). Hooray for a next destination to explore!

Bavarian Alps.