Friday/Saturday: (Unfortunately, we have no pictures from the first day... The pictures here are from Google Image Search. (there's a few from day 2) There's a few links to sites with pictures of most of what we saw...)
I had to work on Friday morning. Our original plan was to leave on Saturday morning, but it worked out for us to leave on Friday. We easily made all our flights and arrived in Stuttgart on Saturday Morning. We went to the Stuttgart train station and waited on a train to Mainz and then on to Bingen where we took a Rhine River boat cruise. (Here's some photos of some of what we saw... Rhine River Photos)
See the big balcony on the top floor in the middle? That was our room!! The Balcony was great. We sat out there a lot and watched the boats and barges (this river is one of the longest rivers in Europe, passing through 6 countries). There is a bike path along most of the Rhine River (at least in Germany, I don't know about other countries). We would have loved to have been able to bike along the river, but didn't have enough time. It is such a beautiful path. I would love to run a marathon there someday.
When we got there, we were so very tired! We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant and walked around a little bit, and then hit the bed. According to my notes (yes, I did keep a "journal" of our trip), we were in bed by 9:30...
The next day, Wes woke up really early. When I woke up, he was sitting on the balcony watching the barges go by. We ate breakfast and walked around St. Goar a little. It's a beautiful little place. Not much to it, but very relaxing. We went into the cuckoo clock store and were fascinated by them. We learned how they were made and how they worked. (The lady in the store spoke perfect German. When we said "Hi" in southern, she then spoke perfect southern! Turns out, she was from Florida.)
After this, we took a train to Koblenz and then another to Moselkern, the nearest train stop to Berg Eltz. Berg Eltz is a very LARGE castle. (This page has several photo blogs from other travelers.) Most castles are perched high up on a hill overlooking a town or region, usually near a water way. This one is in the middle of nowhere, literally! From the train station in Moselkern, (Moselkern is a very small town. It was Sunday...nothing was open... but in Moselkern, there was nothing to open...) and then we walked about 3 kilometers or so up this long winding path through woods (it was beautiful, btw-wish I had those pictures...). There was only one hotel restaurant that was open along the way. We made the mistake of not bringing water because we thought we could get some in Moselkern before we started hiking... bad idea. It wasn't hot at all, but we were suffering a little by the time we got up there. Here's some pictures I found of the castle(wiki link)...
The castle is still the residence of its owners, the Eltz family. They live in only one section of it. We took an English tour and got to see several rooms (set up for the tour, obviously, but enjoyable) The castle was being renovated while we were there. If you look at the first picture, the left side of the castle was completely covered with scaffolding in our pictures. This was a recurring theme during our trip. Nearly every castle, church and museum we intended to see was being renovated. EVERY ONE! Just wait... (Of the pictures we do have), you'll see... So we left the castle and walked all the way back to Moselkern (we walked a lot this trip...I lost 7 pounds!) I should explain that the train system in Europe is amazing! If it existed in the US, I wouldn't have a car. The only problem is, when you're in a very small town, the trains don't stop that often. We got to the train station about two minutes too late (we tried to hurry). The next train didn't stop for an hour! Like I said before, there was NOTHING in Moselkern. So we sat there at the train station for an hour...waiting... These are OUR pictures... The only ones we have from that day (besides 4 closeups of the castle)
--Moselkern train station... Don't think it's a big station... It's just a building. No one works there. There were different color curtains in most of the upstairs windows. I think people lived there. There's not even a machine to buy tickets. Just a paper schedule on the wall. 
--Wes reading about our next day's adventures... (We should be spokespersons or something for Rick Steves... HINT!) 
Monday 8/10
The next morning we decided to go back to the Cuckoo clock store and we ended up buying a cuckoo clock!! Most stores have "exclusive" clocks, meaning they sell a clock that was made especially for them. This store was a little different. They had a GIANT clock outside their store. Their exclusive clock is a replica of it. That's the one we bought. We should get it in a few weeks. Here's a picture of the clock and the store (from the web).
After buying the clock, we went back to the hotel and checked out. This hotel was recommended in the Rick Steves book and they offered a discount for it. (Wes is a big fan) A lot of RS recommended places give discounts if you show them the book. We used this to our advantage quite often. We signed the guestbook and headed for the train station (just behind the hotel, up the hill... everywhere we went there were cobblestones. - after about four days, our ankles and feet got sore). Wes took a picture of me in front of the hotel, but well, ya know that story...
Our next stop was Rothenberg Ob De Tauber (Rothenberg on the Tauber River). Getting there was tough. We took a train to Mainz, then another train to Frankfurt (which we'll visit unexpectedly later on). What was supposed to be a short ride turned into over an hour. The train stopped about 10 minutes into the ride and sat on the tracks for a long time. The conductor said something in German over the speaker, but we didn't know what was going on. Then we started going back towards Mainz. No idea what happened. We thought maybe an accident on the tracks or something. We returned to Mainz HBF (Hauptbahnhof - Haupt means central / Bahnhof means train station) but the train stopped before we got to a platform. We could see several other trains (full of people) waiting as well. We finally continued and made it to Frankfurt. Still don't know what that was all about. Anyway, in Frankfurt, we had to change trains again. We headed to Wurzburg. (I took pictures on this train. We were going through farmland and really pretty rolling hills. There were these HUGE windmills too. Bigger than I've ever seen...) and Again another train to Steinech. Steinech is another very small train stop. The only reason you stop there is to catch the train to Rothenberg. The last train (to Rothenburg) was a diesel train and very short. It's only journey was from Steinech to Rothenburg several times a day. Once the train stopped, the conductor went to the back of the train, cranked the other engine and went the other way... That would be a boring job...
Continued in Part 2.....
1 comment:
Awesome.....The pics... are great......Your writings make me feel like I was there....MOM
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