Entrance to Rothenburg ob der Tauber

You are pretty much a boss when you drive through the gates of a city tower to enter a small town/city in Europe.  Whether it is Cordoba, Spain, Obidos, Portugal, or Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany. 

It's an awesome feeling of joy and wonderment.  There is nothing like it in the United States (well, maybe making it across Manhattan on city streets with dinging your car).

And, it's actually two gates, an outer gate, some separation and turn, and the inner gate, to provide both more protection for the city and to increase your chances of scraping your car against the gate walls.

(To be fair, Obidos was a much tighter gate, this one was easy by comparison.  Carol pretty much stopped whimpering when we were half-way through the outer gate, although the whimpering started again as we approached the second gate, and then stopped even more quickly when she realized how wide it was.)

And that's our cool entrance into Rothenburg.  We drove a few blocks down and easily found our apartment for the night.  It's a two level, first floor apartment (which means, of course, it is on the second floor in Europe, as they label the ground floor as "zero."

Here's the outer part of the Klingen Gate

The inner part, although the

tree obscures the gate.

Here's the inner part of the

Klingen gate from inside

the city.  Believe it or not, it

is a two-way street!