We left at 8am with our new driver Franco. The bus was quiet with a number of people now with colds. We filled in our tour evaluations. Overall it was good value for money with an excellent guide and driver. It would however have been nice to have another night in some places and the temperature changes were quite hard to cope with. We kept being told how unusual the weather was. JB wondered if the volcanic ash may be having some effect.

We went past a couple of fields full of solar panels (solar farms) and over the Danube . It is a much smaller river here and not nearly as dirty or swollen.

The name 'the Romantic Road" is a tourism tag dating from the 1950's when US soldiers would take their families to this area. Road signs are in German and Japanese because it is very popular with tourists from Japan

We went past Harbourg (sp?) castle and were told that Michael Jackson had wanted to buy it but was stopped by the local town mayor. There were lots of pretty villages and poppies growing on the roadside.

We stopped in Nordlingen for about an hour, a nice medieval town. It was degrees cooler here which was nice, although I did wish I had put in my jacket as I usually did. We walked past the town wall which was in very good order. There were trout in the stream that we walked across. The houses were a variety of styles and colours, with some window boxes and shutters. There was a garden market in operation and many commented on the roses . We enjoyed a bonsai exhibition in the hall. John stopped for bratwurst and I bought shorts!! In the shop they had the time in New York and WagaWaga – which would have seemed very odd but we had been told that Waga Waga was the sister town. I took a photo of the clocks which John thought was odd. There were a lot of pig statues – it is the emblem of the town.

We drove past and through more villages for the next hour. In the middle of small towns there were statues, the shuttered buildings and window boxes and also solar panels on many roofs. Anita played Elvis Priestley singing romantic songs as background mood music.

We had a 2 hour lunch stop at the lovely tourist town of Rothenburg. Liz would have stayed all day in the Christmas shop. It had 3 floors of displays.

The wall around the town was intact and we had intended walking part of it but we ran out of time. We had lunch in a little back area, sharing a mushroom tagatelli and apple strudel . The owner missed my request for a pizza but it worked out very well. We watched the town clock at 2pm. It shows a man drinking a gallon of wine in one gulp in order to save the Protestant church!! We bought a local snowball cake, the town’s signature dish, as we left. Most people had bought snowballs as well as Christmas decorations and dolls here.

We also observed a lot of bubbles floating about. We then discovered a large teddy bear sitting in a window box that was programmed to dip his wand in bubbles and then blow them – very cute…

Back on the bus I think we were running on a major road parallel to the Romantic Road. After about an hour we passed by Wursburg which Anita said was the end of the Romantic Strasse. It is a lovely area and would be great to come back to with a car to explore the smaller places at leisure.

Our last hotel is in Fredrickson (just out of Frankfurt) which is about 30 minutes from the airport . It looks like a nice suburban area- from the windows of our room which is as far as we have gone. We then went down for the last tour meal which was very nice. We had asparagus soup, fish with rice and spinach, and a nice dessert of strawberry mousse in a chocolate case with moulded icecream on the top. It was just right. Then the email addresses of the group were handed around, lots of photos taken and the final farewells made.

In the elevator a man asked me if we had just finished a bus tour, which makes me wonder if we have a particular look about us. It would have a fair dose of tiredness. We have been part of a great group, had an excellent tour guide and driver and have seen some wonderful cities, but we are ready for a quieter time without 6am wakeup calls for a while. Today was much less intense and wound the bus trip down nicely. Tomorrow we pick up our car to continue our travels.