Hooray - no rain today! Still a bit cool at 14 deg, but we're not really complaining. We went to see some more of the places on the Romantic Road I’d identified as being worthy of a visit, starting with Nordlingen. This was very different to Rothenburg, being a “real” town and not just a tourist mecca, and set in the Ries crater, formed 15 million years ago by a meteor. It wasn't as colourful as yesterday's town, but neither was it as touristy, which is always a bonus.


Like Rothenburg, Nordlingen is completely encircled by galleried walls but we didn't walk them - today's objective was to see the town from on high. We had a look round the church of St Georg, which had a lovely organ & ceiling, then went to see the tower. The Daniel bell tower is 90m high, so we did our whole year's anaerobic exercise in about 15 mins by climbing the 350 steps up it.....fortunately the view was well worth it - after we'd stopped panting for breath. It was actually amazing, all pantiled red roofs and in fact the view seen by Charlie and Willy Wonka from the great glass elevator.


The tower has a very narrow viewing balcony, which completely encircles it and operates with a one-way system – a good job, as there is absolutely no room at all to pass anyone else. R spotted a stork's nest on the top of a nearby building, & we were delighted to see she had 5 chicks in there. It was very obvious that the town sits in a crater 25km across, as you could just make out the edge of it in some places.




After lunch we moved on to Dinkelsbuhl, another small walled town with towers every 2 mins round its walls and lots more of those wonderfully coloured buildings with pointy roofs & shutters. The shops also had the name of each business painted onto the walls with Gothic-type lettering instead of using modern hoardings, which looked great. We rewarded our previous tower-climbing antics with my favourite German tradition, coffee & cake at 3pm, and shared a huge piece of strawberry gateau, which cost all of €1.50, then walked it off with an amble round the town.