Romantic Road, Germany
 

How many days would you put aside to do the romantic road, and what are some of the highlights?

Let's start out with a defintion of the "Romantic Road", Romantische Strasse.

This is a combination of regular highways whioh connect some pretty towns and villages. There is nothing romantic about the road itself. Some people call it an excellent marketing job.

It starts in Wertheim, along the Main river, and ends in Fuessen (near the Neuschwanstein castle).

A good place to start on the road is in Bad Mergentheim, coming from Wuerzburg,which with its huge castle and fowntown Residenz palace in itself is worth at least an overnight stop.

Going south, worthwhile stops, not overnights, are Weikersheim (nice little palace), Creglingen (famous wood-carved altar in the Herrgottskirche), Rothenburg (town walls, towers timbered houses, musuem, some interesting churches
and lots of toursist); Dinkelsbuehl, ditto, without the toursist.

Overnight in Rothenburg or one of the nearby towns, like the spa Bad Windsheim or Ansbach. Further south are some nice additional towns/cities like Noerdlingen, Augsburg; but for the most part, it's probably the best use of you time to take autobahn A-7 to Fuessen. Taskes you about 2 1/2 hrs.

There are numerous highlights on the Romantic Road. It begins with the lovely Würzburg and my all time favorite palace, the Residenz of the Prince Bishop, a really beautiful baroque palace.

Probably the most famous and most heavily visited town on the Romantic Road is Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It is jammed with tourists during the day, but is very pleasant in the morning before the tourist buses arrive and in the evening after they leave.

Dinkelsbühl is much quieter but also very charming, as is Nördlingen. Augsburg's 2000 years of history have made it one of southern Germany's major sightseeing attractions. I really enjoyed the architecture.

I haven't visited Füssen, but I know that many people use it as a base for visiting Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

Neuschwanstein is of course the fairy tale castle built by Ludwig, and Hohenschwangau is the nearby castle in which Ludwig grew up. Personally, I liked Hohenschwangau more than Neuschwanstein because it seemed "homier," if a castle can be described as homey.

I like to travel in a leisurely way, so I'd probably spend a week visiting the different towns, with a couple of days in Rothenburg and a day or so in other towns.

My DIL thinks Rothenburg is "the cutest town ever".

I think treplow is right on the money. I don't think the road itself is very attractive, but the towns are. I think all the little towns he/she mentioned are worth a look.

We also found Feuchtwangen and Noerdlingen worth a visit.