GERMANY - DAY 9

We left Nuremberg and traveled into Rothenburg. We wandered around looking at the medieval buildings. We looked through Kathe Wohlfahrt. It was a wonderful world of exquisite decoration and gift ideas for the Christmas holidays including nutcrackers and incense smokers, pyramids and music boxes as well as beautiful ornaments made of wood, glass and pewter. I could have gone crazy and bought so much stuff for Christmas but I restrained myself and didn't buy anything.

We tried a local sweet called schnowballe. It would take some getting use to. We followed the Romantic Road through picturesque villages and pristine countryside to Munich, the lively capital of Bavaria.

We stopped at BMW World where we were allowed to sit in the variety of new cars and bikes they had on display. The girls loved it. Pasqual and Paul continued their friendly rivalry between BMW and Mercedes. Paul sneakily purchased a BMW toy car for Pasqual and left it on his seat in the bus to find, and then Grandad got a present of a cap with, you guessed it, BMW on it. Paul reckons that he is using subliminal conditioning on Pasqual so that by the end of the year he will be compelled to buy a BMW. Not going to happen. Across the road from BMW World was the Olympic Stadium.

We headed into the city centre and made our way to Ludwigstrasse and Marienplatz, famous for its Glockenspiel Carillon. We stood around and watched the clock strike five and watched the clock performance (which lasted about fifteen minutes). It was great.

After checking in, we headed out for dinner. We found a tiny Italian place around the corner. The food was excellent and it wasn't very expensive. We wandered back and had ice-cream.