Tuesday June 11th

This morning we set off after having checked out, fortunately I knew what the total would come to and it turned out they were almost going to charge me 21 Euros extra!  But he corrected it and everything was fine.  Phew!

The first thing we did was the Celtic Museum, which wasn't actually that far away from where we had been staying.  We visited it because Mathew said there were English translations, and also because it had been closed yesterday.

It was a small, but very well done museum, still looking more or less pretty new actually.  There were lots of panels with German and English writing on, but there were still a few which didn't, and the video at the end didn't have English available either so we didn't go up and do that.  The Museum is set on part of the Iron Age village in the immediate vicinity of the royal burial mound which was discovered there.  there is an arching construction outside the museum which shows where the various levels of the mound were, and inside the museum there is an underground life size reconstruction of the burial chamber, which was really very clever!

The woman at the till didn't speak much English but we managed ok - I bought a silver pendant from the display cabinet which turned out to be one of a kind (I think, as she took it right out of the cabinet), and there seemed to be a lot of paperwork involved with selling it as she leaved through a folder, found the photo of it and wrote down the date and price at which it was sold...!  After this, we went outside to look at the reconstructions in the grounds which were really quite large and spacious dwellings, and the walked over to the reconstructed mound which we could see, from the summit, was a very good place to see the entire surrounding landscape from.

Onwards we went to Rothenburg ob der Tauber - we were going back into Bavaria!  I didn't really know what to expect, and Mathew had a bit of an idea.....but we were both very pleasantly surprised with it!  We thought it had similarities with York, it was very touristy but had the real surviving buildings in the old town, and the whole place was surrounded by an wall!  We could have spent all day there, and we probably would have if it weren't for visiting the Museum.  In fact, we did have a couple of museums on our list to do in Rothenburg, but we were enjoying it outside so much, we didn't bother.  And we also decided within the first 15 minutes of being there, that we would ditch the Schloss in Würzburg on our last day in Germany, and spend the day in Rothenburg ob der Tauber instead.  We just loved the place.  We found a bakery which sold sandwiches (a rarity in Germany, so it seems!) and then we tried the town's own delicacy - the Schneeball.  Basically it's a big ball of knotted pastry covered in icing or chocolate, sprinkles etc, all different flavours.  We went for an amaretti marzipan one and it was delicious.  Yet again I felt that it wasn't sickly sweet, so I'm still surprised with German sweetbreads!  These Schneeballs come in different sizes, so I thought about buying some for everyone at work - the little ones.  I could buy 2 boxes of 8 and I'd be sorted :)  Also, plenty of souvenir shops too, but I thought I'd give Nuremburg a chance first, especially if we were going back to Rothenburg on our last day.

We went on to our next hotel which was in a place called Schwarzenbruck, just outside Nurenberg, and had dinner there that evening as it was a "Hotel-Restaurant".  Fortunatly the menu came in English too, so Mathew chose the fish curry while I had tenderloin with (very) roast onions, green beans and potatoes.  Very nice but.....yes, rather salty!!