Germany 3: A day trip to Würzburg, Castle Colmberg, and a donkey hike

   My next hotel was only fifteen minutes away, and there was agap between the check out time and the new check in time, so I decided to visit Wurzburg for the day.  I parked my car in the large parking lot directly in front of the Würzburg Residence.  I did the indoor tour, despite photography being disallowed.  The second floor housed a majority of the rooms on display, and what was there was quite beautiful.  Back outside, I followed around to the side and behind the building, and spent time in the gardens.

  Afterwards, I walked thirty minutes through town, carefully avoiding all of the pastry shops.  Across a bridge, I began a climb up a hill to visit the Marienberg Fortress.

  The insides of the fortress were only available to be seen by guided tour, but I never actually saw a ticket booth or way to schedule it.  In any case, I wandered around, admiring the architecture and the view.  Then, I walked back across town and drove towards Castle Colmberg.

My castle hotel from the distance.

The view from my room.

The decoration on the elevator up to the third floor.

  The one full day while staying at the castle was reserved for one activity, a donkey hike.  Found on the Castle Colmberg website was a link to a donkey hike, so I had to give that a try.  The weather report showed rain, so I emailed the farm hosting the hike, but they responded that it actually was not scheduled to rain.  It began drizzling around five minutes before I arrived.  10 minutes into the walk it became a downpour.  Luckily, I brought my poncho, but it was still quite wet.  As a result, I was not able to take pictures of the wheat fields that we walked along.  Near the end, it finally petered out, and I took this picture of a rainbow and the farmer's church.

  The route that I had taken to their farm.  The route to the Bines Biobauernhof farm had me retracing my route to Rothenburg and beyond.  As I was returning to the hotel, I encountered the view of  Rothenburg, and a rainbow was extending out from the top of the city.  Unfortunately, I decided to leave my camera gear at the hotel, so I was stuck with my cell phone.

  Both nights, I ate at the castle restaurant, and ordered the same meal.  Frankische  Hochzeitsuppe, soup with two types of dumplings and pancake strips.  It tasted very similarly to matzoh ball soup.  The main course was Marinierte Tomaten-Mozzarella und Rukola.  It was essentially mozzarella cheese on a small salad.