One more hotel for Dec trip--Nordlingen or Dinkelsbuhl. Help!

I thought I had a booking in Dinkelsbuhl at the Mesier Altstadt (reviews said they had parking) but on contacting the hotel directly they said there is no private parking inside the walls.

There is a Meiser Hotel at the Weinmarkt in the historic center and a Meiser Hotel (run by the same family) about 1 km outside the old town in a rather boring commercial district. As far as I know, only the latter has its own parking. And I also doubt that parking can be easily found inside the walls; hat's hard enough at normal times of the year. Turning the (small) town into a Christmas market and providing parkings is simply mutually exclusive. But along the walls there are quite a few parking spaces and it is absolutely common for visitors to leave their cars there overnight. The situation in Noerdlingen is similar. And neither Dinkelsbühl nor Nördlingen are particularly notorious for crime.

I lived in Augsburg, Germany for four years and did the Romantic Road. You can see Dinkelsbuhl and Nordlingen in a full day. Consider staying in Augsburg, it is over 2000 years old and worth a stay.

You’re probably already aware of this tip, but it’s a good idea to check each hotel’s website in addition to third party booking sites. Recently I was looking for a hotel in Salzburg for late November-early December and the place I liked showed no weekend availability on OTAs but did have it on their own site along with additional room types and a better cancellation policy.

Thanks, I think the Winemarkt is the one that Booking.com calls "Altstadt"...took me a bit to figure that out! I think we need to get used to the idea that the car won't be on hotel property, and also figure out exactly how we find a spot.

Augsberg does look neat, thanks for the tip.

Liz in NS (hey neighbour!) also a good reminder. I have been primarily using Booking.com to find stuff, then checking their website before I book with Booking, but haven't always dug deeply on the ones that Booking says are sold out.

During my public transportation trip on the Romantic Road in 2007, I spent a night in Nördlingen and loved the town. Nördlingen has an intact, or nearly intact, wall surrounding it, and the wall has a Wehrgang you can walk on (Dindelsbühl does not). I think of Nördlingen as Rothenburg odT's little sister, with all of the charm of a middle age walled town, but without the tourist traps of a Christmas Shop or Crime and Punishment Museum. However, Nördlingen does have the Ries Museum, dedicated to the ancient meteor crater, in which Nördlingen sits. Our Apollo astronauts trained on the walls of that crater because it was thought that its terrain resembled those of the moon.

On my 2007, 5 day trip, up the Romantic Road, I spent 20 hours (overnight) in Nördlingen and regretted having to leave.

In 2007, I stayed at and enjoyed a Gasthaus run by Uli Wenger just outside the city walls at Deininger Tor. Uli has since moved to a new building inside the city wall, on Löpsinger Str. , called Wengers Brettl. If it is anything like their former business in 2007, I would heartily recommend them.

Thank you all, with a bit of back-and-forth, we are booked at the Goldenes Lamm in Dinkelsbuhl. When I contacted directly, they told me they were full--I had requested a double--but Booking.com offered us a triple. Happy to take a slightly larger room, for not a lot more.