About 10km into the drive towards Ulm, we remembered that today was the day to drive down the Romantic Road. Out came our Lonely Planet guide and the maps as we tried to work out which pieces of the Romantic Road we wanted to go down. We learnt that the Romantic Road was just a general route that included as many quaint German towns from western Bavaria as possible, so we set Gertie to take us to Rothenberg ob der Tauber avoiding the autobahn.

[Rebecca] There were two certainties as we entered each town ... Gertie would tell Brett "you are over the speed limit" and Brett would tell me with a sweep of his arm to "regard the quaintness".

[Back to Brett again] After failing to find a park on the first pass through Rothenburg, we stopped on the side of the road and heated up the remaining hack flesh for lunch. Yum! Second time lucky we found a spot right next to the walls which circled the old city and were built for defence back in the day.

The old town was quite medieval looking with more cobbled streets and tall half timbered buildings but this time there was a horse and cart to add to the ambience. While looking for the tourist info, we stumbled upon one of the town's attractions: Rathausturm which involves a climb up 220 of the most rickety stairs you'll ever see (ok I exaggerate: the first 40 were sturdy concrete, the remainder were wood). Rebecca needed a bit of encouragement half way up as she was looking a bit green and unsteady! After the final dodgy ladder, we realised the dodginess was just preparation for the platform. It circled around the tower and was an entire foot in width meaning you had to coordinate clockwise or anticlockwise with your fellow travellers. Aunty Margareth and Mum B would have been very proud of Rebecca's white knuckles as she gripped onto the railing! Despite this, the views were stunning and we were able to regard the quaintness from up high.

We next visited the Christmas shop which blew our minds. There was room upon room of Christmas decorations, ornaments and trees spanning multiple levels and what felt like a city block in area. We thought that Monique would love it and could spend her entire OE there :) Photos weren't allowed but we took a few sneaky ones :)

We made our way to Dinkelsbuhl on the narrowest roads Gertie could find and had an ice cream while we walked around the town. Parking wasn't a problem here - it was very clear that no rules applied! It was very similar to Rothenburg, just a bit smaller, and with a completely different name.

With Gertie set to autobahn mode, we went Ulm-ward and then decided to find a campsite closer to Legoland. Navigation was a challenge, due to the ridiculous signage on the road, i.e. a "campsite this way" sign meaning "please turn here then guess your way forward". We gave up and got a "map" (i.e. not a map, but a scribble) from Legoland with the closest campsite circled and eventually found our way to a lovely campsite in the bush. We were both quite excited that we were planning to stay two nights and didn't have to go through this rubbish the next day.

- Brett and Rebecca