Summer Trip Part 3: The Rhine

We spent one day exploring the little town of Espenshied -- where my grandmother's ancestors came from -- and took a boat cruise on the Rhine River between the towns of St. Goar and Bacharach. I'll cover Espenshied on a separate post. After leaving Espenshied, we had to cross the Rhine on an auto ferry to get over to St. Goar. Ever since Roman times, the Rhine river has been one of the world's busiest shipping rivers.

Driving onto the ferry

There's our little Ford Escape with Bryan inside

The other side, St. Goar

A nice little wine shop in St. Goar

St. Goar, with Rheinfels Castle in the background

The boat from St. Goar to Bacharach was a hot, sunny, 10 mile ride past towns, castles and churches. Some of these castles were homes to "robber-barons," who pulled chains up across the river to stop shipping boats from passing unless they paid a toll. In the 11th-13th centuries, there were 10 such stops in the 60 mile stretch between Mainz and Koblenz alone. We sat up top so I could take pictures! Here's what we saw...

This one looks kind of like a ship, on an island in the river.  It was a notorious "toll" point.

Barges on the Rhine are numerous, transporting goods in and out of Europe. My Rick Steves guide book taught me that the barge lifestyle is a sort of sub-culture -- families own them and live in the stern, workers live in the bow, and the family car and boat rides on top of the bow in the open. There used to be boarding schools in the town of Kaub for the barge-families' children, but they are gone since most barge owners are foreign now.  Each barge can haul 2000 tons of goods.

The bow

The stern

We got off in Bacharach (pronounced bock-ah-rock), which we really liked as soon as we saw it. It was beastly hot, so we headed for the most important errand first -- gelato! This little place actually had good Italian gelato, run by a real Italian named Mimo. We found this out because, out of habit, Andrew began to order his gelato IN Italian and Mimo was impressed!

For 300 years (1300-1600) this town was big (pop.4000), rich, and powerful. Now, catering mostly to tourists, this is what Bacharach looks like today...

There is a huge old church ruin halfway up the hill.

The heat was awful, but we hiked up to the top of the hill to see the castle. In the 1200's, for a few years, this castle was actual the capital of Germany. Now, it is a Youth Hostel.

The kids each picked up a souvenir "Bock-ah-ROCK" on the trail

Castle courtyard

When we left Bacharach, we boarded another boat headed back up to our car at St. Goar. This time, the boat was much larger and nicer, and after all the heat, we enjoyed sitting inside in the AC, enjoying some snacks and drinks.

I know how to live!

And so we went back to our home-base of Heidleberg that evening. Next up, Espenshied, Germany.

Summer Trip Part 2: Heidelberg

We spent 3 nights in Heidelberg, using it as a home-base for our day trips to other towns. These pictures cover all three days as we got to enjoy different parts of the town each evening. I had been to Heidelberg before, in April, with my community theater friends, for the Toppers Awards. I loved it so much, I was excited to share it with my family. Heidelberg is one of those comfy towns I could happily live in!

Beautiful sunset view of Heidelberg Castle (taken by Andrew!)

Our hotel was the first white one in front of Andrew

The Neckar River

Town Square

This little crepe stand was a favorite of the kids! They visited this guy several times in the three days, getting cheese and mushroom crepes and Nutella crepes. These little crepe stands are everywhere in Europe, and they are so good! I don't know why we don't have more of them in the US!

See, they hug even when they don't know they are being photographed!!!

If you keep up with this blog, you will have seen very similar photos of this castle from my last trip. It is impressive, and I had to show it to Andrew!

Castle courtyard

One area of the castle I didn't see last time had giant wine barrels. This one is big, but there was another one that filled a room so that I couldn't even get a picture of it!

View from the castle garden

View of town from the castle

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Heidelberg! Next up on this trip -- The Rhine River and Bacharach!

Summer Trip Part 1: Garmisch and Rothenburg

For our big family summer adventure, we planned a week in Germany -- well, mostly Germany -- with a stopover on the way home in France! This blog post will cover day one and two of our trip. We started off with a night in one of our favorite European places -- Garmisch. It was a great place to spend the first night, to break up the long drive, and to enjoy our favorite restaurant anywhere. Even the drive is fun for us; only 6 hours, and beautiful the whole way through the Alps. The flower boxes were amazing this time of year. I think all Germans and Austrians are born with the talent to have thriving window boxes on their homes. I'm sure they are kicked out of the country if they don't have this gene! ;o)

Along the way to Garmisch...

This time, we opted for a town hotel instead of the Army resort there, just to have a different experience. We are glad we did! Our new digs were wonderful and had beautiful flowers too.

The kids enjoyed a few "gut fahrts" on the alpine toboggan slide. (1 "fahrt" = 1 ride). This German word provides endless fun for our 13-year-old! My only shots are blurry action shots!

Love that smile!

And here we are in front of our FAVORITE restaurant, practically drooling before going in. It never disappoints!

The hotel had a great pool, so Bryan and I checked e-mail on our iPads while the kids blew off some steam.

Next morning, we enjoyed a wonderful hotel breakfast and headed north to Rothenburg, Germany (pronounced without the "h," ie. Rotenburg). It was the most picturesque place, with a lot of charm and color, and old walls all around the town. Too bad for us, it was also 96 degrees!

This town was too cute!

Town Square

Time for lunch!

Me and my cold beer!

They have a world-famous Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum there. It was rather disturbing, so I won't put any pics up of the things we saw inside (Bryan and Andrew loved it), but we did finally get to put the kids where they belong...

We walked all around the city up on the old walls. We have done this before in other towns, but this one was different in how it was all covered with a roof.

Heading for the A/C in the car!

When we left Rothenburg in the afternoon, extremely hot and tired, we headed two hours west for our next three days' homebase of Heidleberg... (next blog entry!)