Rothenburg Archives - Traveling Huntleys

Last Updated: May 2026

Some trips stay with you for years. The river cruise Sandy and I took aboard Uniworld’s River Duchess — from Amsterdam to Bucharest — is firmly in that category. Over three weeks we sailed through eight countries along three connected waterways: the Rhine through Germany’s most celebrated wine valleys and cathedral towns, the Main through Franconia’s medieval heartland, and then the Danube itself — broad and green through Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, growing quieter and wilder the further east we traveled.

We wrote a dedicated post for every stop on the journey. This is the post that connects them all — a stop-by-stop account of twenty-one destinations in the order we visited them. If you are researching a similar cruise or simply want to revisit the journey with us, the links below will take you to each full story.

Michael Huntley, lunch, Bucharest, Romania

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Last Updated: May 2026

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is one of the most remarkably preserved medieval towns in the world — a place where the Middle Ages didn’t merely leave traces but essentially survived intact, with a nearly complete circuit of fortified walls, half-timbered houses crowding cobblestone lanes, and a market square that looks much as it did five centuries ago. From Würzburg, the route took us from wine country toward beer country — a transition from Franconia’s vineyard-covered slopes toward Bavaria. Rothenburg is an inland town rather than a river stop, so we arrived by excursion bus, and Sandy and I spent the day completely absorbed in its fairy-tale atmosphere. Very few places in the world deliver on their reputation as completely as Rothenburg does.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber café with scooter and flower boxes, Germany

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From Amsterdam to Bucharest: Our Complete Rhine, Main, and Danube River Cruise

Rothenburg, Germany