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Munich to Zurich

  • Aug 14, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

Up early again, this time to catch a train from Munich to Zurich. We checked out of our comfy hotel room, and caught an early express train out of Munich. There was no need for reservations and we got good seats in first class. We were a little worried because Roger said that there was some kind of street festival going on in Zurich today, but as it turned out there weren’t many people on the train.

I had the munchies so a really nice cook in the kitchen car set us up with a plate of cheese and prosciutto to snack on during the long ride. The train actually traveled through Austria at one point, so the ticket checker made us pay an extra fee, since our rail passes were only valid in Belgium/Luxemborg, Germany and Switzerland. So we paid 18 Euros for both of us to pass through yet another country. Truth be told, the part of Austria we passed through looked pretty much like Switzerland and Germany to me. At first the scenery along the way was just the same track that we had used the day before on the way to Fussen, but soon after turning towards Austria things changed pretty quickly. The hills here were much more rolling and green, and the skies turned blue and bright with the sun. Nice to have good weather for sightseeing from the train.

The train arrived in Zurich at noon, and so after changing our Euros to Swiss Francs we went south from the packed station to find Café 0815 – our designated meeting place with Roger. Unfortunately we were two hours early, so Kuniko and I had a mini-fight over how to spend the next two hours. We ended up checking into our hotel (Hotel Alexander) and then going back to 0815 at 2 p.m. We didn’t know what Roger looked like, so we weren’t sure what to do. After about ten minutes, I noticed that there was a single guy inside the café, so I went inside and asked him in English, “Are you Roger?” Unfortunately, he just shook his head and looked at me like I was crazy. I explained that we were waiting for a guy named Roger, but it was one of those situations where the more explaining you do the crazier you seem, so I just waved my apologies and headed back outside the cafe to wait with Kuniko. And after another few minutes, Roger strolled up and sat beside us and said hello.

This was our first time to meet Roger, as we had been connected through my aunt Nancy’s email correspondence. He lives in Zurich and has spent some time in California where he met Nancy, and so she put us together in Zurich so he could show us around a bit. He was a really nice guy with great English, so we had a drink with him and introduced ourselves. We felt comfortable with him right away, and so after we paid our tab we left with him to go check out the street festival on the lakeshore.

On the way we stopped to try some of Roger’s beer. He works for a brewery/restaurant outside of Zurich, and so we stopped in at a grocery store where he persuaded the manager to chill down three bottles with the wine chilling machine they had. After about five minutes the bottles were cold and we were out the door, popping the tops off, and enjoying a Zurich microbrew. Excellent beer – and it hit the spot after a long morning of traveling.

As we walked with the crowd it got more and more bizarre as people in costumes, scantily clad, or barely clad, and just regular folks congregated at the side of the lake to listen to dance music and dance like crazy all night. When planning our trip I had no idea that this event was happening, but since it was going on and it was free, we decided to check it out.

And it was total chaos. It was such a huge crowd of people that it was difficult to walk. Everybody danced in place as big rigs carrying dancing people, DJs, and sound systems drove slowly through the crowd. Alcohol, weed, smiles, dancing, and broken glass everywhere – it was tricky just to stay together through all the madness. After a couple of trucks went by we found a restaurant nearby selling Roger’s beer on tap, and with each beer you bought you got a free ticket to use their (clean) bathrooms. Nice selling point – clean bathrooms were hard to find there.

We drank and talked and watched the crazy costumes – people watching has rarely been better. Roger was a good guy and really took care of us, and even made a restaurant reservation for the two of us for later that evening. We moved around a bit to see some of the stationary stages, and after watching Mustard Pimp for a while we headed back to civilization and we cut Roger loose to meet up with his friends. Kuniko and I were still buzzing pretty good from the beer and second hand smoke so we decided to get a taxi to the restaurant just to be safe, since we were in a new city. The taxi driver took us where we wanted to go, and sorted out our money for us (and took a pretty good tip on top of it) and then we were at the entrance of the restaurant.

The place was a little out of the way, and kind of looked like someone’s house more than a restaurant. It was called Klein 6, and inside it looked a lot like the upscale restaurants that are so popular in the California wine country. We settled down at our table, and they brought a hand-written menu full of pretty contemporary fare. We were still slightly drunk from the street party, but managed to order our food and wine without a problem. I had grilled tiger shrimp on rice, and Kuniko had basil raviolis in a cream sauce. The food turned out to be excellent, and despite flinging a couple of my tomatoes from the dinner salad off the table I think we didn’t look too out of control. After all that drinking on (basically) an empty stomach the food hit the spot.

After dinner we begged off and walked back to the hotel to save some money and get some exercise. Kuniko navigated us home very easily, and we even tried something that I had been wanting to check out since we arrived in Germany – Curryworst. Kuniko bought it and brought it to our hotel room, and it was really good. Cut up sausage floating in a thick curry sauce, with a side of bread. I think I was most excited about the bread simply for the absorption potential. I think I will try to make something similar back in Japan.

That night we slept soundly, but in the distance noise from the all night party could still be heard. Also we discovered we were quite close to a church, and the bells going off every hour added to the feeling that we were really in Europe.

Fussen

  • Aug 13, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

Had to wake up in the middle of the night and took the last and only Japanese antacid that I brought on the trip – and it seemed to help immediately. From now on we are working without a net…

We headed to the station around 8:30 in the morning to catch a 9 o’clock train to Fussen. Right away there was some confusion about which train to take, and a station worker suggested a train which was completely different from the one suggested the day before by the ticket desk clerk. We tried to buy a saver pass, but I ended up buying the wrong one, and so we lost out on about 12 Euros. Overall, the pass we did get probably saved us about 12 Euros, so it probably ended up being a wash. But as we boarded the train we were a little worried about the expedition because of all the uncertainty.

The style of train that we took out of Munich was pretty cool, though. It was a lot like the Hogwarts Express Рa long hallway on the side with several small rooms/compartments that sat around six people tightly or four people comfortably. We shared a compartment not with Emma Watson or Daniel Radcliffe but with two Korean guys who looked like they were headed to the same destination. They slept most of the way, however, and when we reached a certain station we got off to wait for another connecting train and they stayed there sleeping. We had some time to kill at the station so we walked over to a small caf̩ and got some coffees and a Danish to go. Always with the eating.

Finally the train came, and we traveled deep into the countryside on a single train track. Sheltered on the mountainside was Neuschwanstein Castle. Even from the train from far away it was a dramatic sight – the white color in stark contrast to the dark forest surrounding it. Behind it the cloudy skies and mist really set a mysterious atmosphere. We got out of the train and headed to the buses waiting nearby, and then took a 15 minute ride to the area just under the castle.

Upon arrival we found that we weren’t the only ones who came to see the castle. In fact, the place was swamped with tourists, buses, and more tourists. We walked up the hill a short way and found huge lines of people – something like what you’d expect at Disneyland – and no clear instructions on what to do next. This was still at the very base of the hill, long before we even got to the castle. I made a judgment call and decided that we should ignore the huge lines and go straight up to the castle.

We started hiking up the hill, and made really good time. They had horses and carriages taking people up for a fee, otherwise you could walk up on your own. Most people were walking, and the horses left plenty of landmines to avoid while traveling the pathway. It was a little smelly, and now and then it sprinkled, but nothing worth pulling out the umbrella for. After a very speedy 20 minute hike uphill, we arrived at the castle.

It was very impressive, and we walked around the outside taking pictures and trying to figure out what the procedure was for going in. We around the side and found that they were calling out numbers of groups of people, and the only way in was to have a ticket with that number. And the tickets were available for sale. All the way back at the base of the mountain. Where the thousands of people were lined up. Whoops.

Since we were already up there we decided to take a short hike to a pedestrian bridge spanning a gorge a little ways off, and we got some good pictures while we were there. Finally we walked back to the castle, and kind of mutually decided to skip the tour inside. The time we would spend going down the hill, getting in line and waiting, buying a ticket, and then climbing the hill and taking the tour, it just seemed like too much. On top of that the skies looked threatening, and if we were stuck in line in a rainstorm that wouldn’t be much fun. I felt bad that we couldn’t go in, because the castle was one of the things that Kuniko really wanted to see, but she seemed satisfied with seeing just the outside. So we walked down the hill in good spirits.

As we waited for a bus back into town it started raining just a little bit, and then when the bus arrived it started to really come down. We got on the bus just in time, and I couldn’t help but think that we made the right decision – it would have sucked to be waiting in the rain.

Back in Fussen we had about an hour to kill before the train returning to Munich arrived, so we took the umbrella out and forged our way out to a hotel that we had seen featured on a Japanese television show. It turned out they were closed, so we couldn’t really explore, so we went back and found the main street of Fussen, and had some beers in a bar while we waited out of the rain. On the way back we saw an interesting fast food place that was selling bratwurst, so we split a double bratwurst sandwich, and then went back to catch a train out of there.

Again on the way back we had to deal with the construction, and the railroad pretty much just gave up on moving people through there by train, so we went over and caught a bus that moved us past the construction zone, and then we caught a completely different train that took us back to Munich station.

We were pretty tired after the adventure, and a little wet and scraggly-looking, but we decided to go to another beer restaurant, Spaten Munich, that my student had recommended for dinner. Turns out that this place was just a bit upscale, and we felt a little out of place in our adventure clothes, but the waiter didn’t blink an eye, and sat us down right in the middle of the dining room despite not having a reservation.

Food at Spaten was excellent – Kuniko had veal meatballs with an excellent cognac pepper sauce and I had some very cheesy spaetzel. Most of the other patrons were a little bit older, and I caught a few of them watching us wolf down our meals. I smiled and nodded at an older woman who was watching us carefully, and she smiled and nodded back, but continued to watch. Not sure what was going on, but the food was great, and we would happily go back – good place.

Afterwards we bought a small present for Roger in Zurich, since that was our next destination, and then dragged our tired bodies back to the hotel to head to bed.

Munich

  • Aug 12, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

It was a little tough getting up after such a heavy meal the previous day, and we decided to forgo the hotel breakfast (although the price was a factor – 21 Euros each – no way…). Instead we went to the station and bought a vegetarian sandwich and an orange juice to split. We took the sandwich with us as we found the right train, and bought a one-day pass for travel within Munich for 9.40 Euros. It turned out to be a good deal. We also saw a guy freaking out with frustration at one of the ticket machines. We felt the same way sometimes with the European train ticket machines, but weren’t quite ready to be driven to madness. The guy ran screaming up the stairs and out of the station, and I don’t know what ever happened to him after that.

We started our day at the BMW museum because of the rainy weather. The idea was to avoid the rain inside at the museum, and then later see some outdoor sights with the hopes that the weather would improve. The BMW museum was recommended by one of my students, so after eating our vegetarian sandwich (again, great bread!) we walked in and started looking around. The exhibits were well-designed, and it was fun to look around. There wasn’t a whole lot to do besides interact with the exhibits, and unfortunately the factory was closed for the summer holiday, but we did get to see some rare cars and have a cup of coffee at the café. Another bonus was free Wi-Fi, so I wrote a few emails in the hopes of making some plans for Zurich with Roger.

After the museum the weather seemed to be letting up, so we took the train back to the center of town, and another tram on to Schloss Nymphenberg. A huge garden surrounded the castle and we walked through the castle to the “back yard” which stretched as far as we could see. It was nice to leisurely stroll around and wonder how many groundskeepers they might have. Very impressive, and we were lucky with the weather to avoid the rain.

We came back to downtown Munich by tram, and then headed to the Hofbrau House, the defacto beer hall in Munich. The place was lively at lunchtime, but we managed to squeeze into a table opposite a friendly looking German couple. Kuniko took another crack at ordering in German from the menu, and we ordered some beers. I just ordered a beer and received one liter of beer in a monster mug. Kuniko wisely asked for a small size, and ended up with 500 ml. Behind us they had a traditional German band playing songs, and the servers were wearing the traditional outfits with the scoop necks. Quite the experience.

Once the food arrived we found out just what we were in for. The pork dish that Kuniko ordered was a huge joint of pork meat on the bone, with two round dumplings soaked in sauce. I had ordered a mixed sausage platter with sauerkraut, and so it looked like we had just about enough beer to kill off the food. It was the first time that I had to carve the lunch before eating it – the pork on the bone was so tender and delicious, but it took some good knife work to get the meat off the bone. Maybe my favorite dish of the trip – so good.

One thing led to another and the atmosphere had me ordering another liter of beer to go with all the great food, and we staggered out of there after lunch pretty well lubricated. Back to the hotel, and it wasn’t long before I passed out on the bed snoring while Kuniko patiently did sudoku waiting for me to wake up. A couple hours later I did, and we headed out for a little research at the train station to figure out the best timetable to use for a trip to Fussen the next day.

They had a special line at the station for English speakers, so we lined up and had to wait a LONG time to ask a pretty basic question. The clerk there told us that it might be tough to get to Fussen the next day because of a lot of construction on a section of track, so we should be flexible with our plans. After taking his advice we bought some simple things for dinner – a sandwich for Kuniko and a chicken curry calzone for me, and then a couple of beers at the supermarket before taking them all back to eat in our hotel room. Our strategy of a big lunch and small dinner paid off, but it is hard to believe how much food we are eating on this trip compared to what we eat in Japan.

Brussels to Munich

  • Aug 11, 2010
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Picture from this day can be found here.

We got up early the next day and checked out of our hotel, and headed out on foot for the Brussels train station. There we caught an Inter-City Express (ICE) train for Cologne, and then on to Frankfurt. We changed trains at Franfurt, and then continued the journey on to Munich. The train ride was very comfortable – the ICE trains are very modern, and we had first class seats so there was food service, so we had hot coffee and hot chocolate at our seats while we traveled.

They had a restaurant car as well, but we had prepared for the trip by shopping for food at Carrefour Express, so we set up a little picnic at our seats. We did much the same thing the last time we were in Europe – it is a good way to save money and also enjoy some local foods. This time we had a big block of stinky cheese, roasted turkey, and crackers to enjoy. We weren’t prepared with a knife, though, so we used a wine opener that we brought with us to slice pieces of cheese onto crackers. Yum.

A guy down the way had completely passed out while taking the train, and at the time we thought it was the loudest that we had heard anyone snore. But that was before our flight home two weeks later. He stayed on for most of the journey, and I think he would have been embarrassed to hear how loud he was snoring.

Finally, after about four hours we pulled into Munich station, and from there it was an easy walk across the street to our hotel (NH Hotel Deutsch Kaiser Munich). The hotel’s close proximity to the station had me worried while planning that perhaps it would be noisy, but our room was on the eighth floor, and absolutely silent – so silent I had to strain to hear any noise at all. The room was very nice as well, maybe the best hotel room of the trip.

After dropping off our gear we set out to explore the old town part of Munich, and I’ll admit that I was at first a little disappointed that there were so many people and so many shops. It felt like walking through an American shopping mall. Towards the end of the street in Marienplatz things got a little better, however. More cathedrals, more historical buildings, and more people. We shared a little table in front of a streetside restaurant with some German people and ordered some beers from the menu, and after a little practice, Kuniko ordered some white sausages in German. The couple cheered his efforts speaking in German, and it was pretty impressive. She is really good at picking up languages, and she really did well with the pronunciation. The sausages were great, although we ate them with the skin on, which I found out later is a faux pas. Locals apparently eat them by skinning them first. Oh well… they were still delicious.

After beer we walked around some more and took in lots of sights. It really is a beautiful city once you get away from the touristy areas. Dinner was at a traditional German restaurant that Kuniko’s guidebook recommended. It was a little bit of an early dinner, actually. The dinner was pretty traditional as well – sausages, pretzels, sauerkraut, beer, beef and pork. Not light at all. Very delicious, but we retired to our hotel completely full.

Koblenz to Brussels

  • Aug 09, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

Waking up was a little tough after such a long start to our trip, but we weren’t on any tight schedules so we could sleep in a bit and enjoy the comfortable beds. We had breakfast at the hotel because it was included in the price, and they put on quite a feast. There weren’t many people staying at the hotel to enjoy it, but Kuniko and I certainly did. Again the breads were great, and they also had lots of variation of yogurt and cereal. Sometimes they were combined already, so it was a bit of an adventure to try some new things.

We checked out of the hotel and then went on foot to the station. On the way we found a couple of supermarkets, and so we stopped to buy some shampoo and conditioner (because you can never be sure if hotels will have them) as well as some other supplies. The supermarket was much different from Japanese ones – about 60% meat, 30% cheese, and 10% everything else. I bought some ibuprofen on my own using an app that I downloaded for my iphone that led me to a pharmacy, and another app that told me how to say “Can I buy something for a headache?” in German. The iphone was very useful on the trip, but there were some drawbacks. I turned off data roaming and 3G to avoid big charges to my account, so that effectively turned off my GPS – I couldn’t really use the GPS to navigate unless I happened to be near a Wi-Fi spot. Luckily there were plenty of wi-fi spots around, it is just a pain to take time out of your vacation to go look for one. So the iphone was a mixed success.

We caught a train to Brussels that passed through Luxembourg. The scenery on the way was very nice, mainly following the river. Once we arrived in Luxembourg we passed a huge building on a hillside, overlooking some other smaller places down below in a river valley – we went by so fast we had no time to take a picture but it was one of the more dramatic things we saw during the trip and we had no time to really go and check it out. More research is necessary to figure out what it was.

We had about an hour to kill transferring in Luxembourg, so we went out into the town to get some sandwiches and drinks to take on the next leg of the train trip. Big surprise that shouldn’t have been – everybody there spoke French. I was just getting used to speaking German and now it was all French. That caught us off-guard, but all in all my French is probably better than my German, and both of them are extremely limited anyway. There was always English to fall back on, and I admit that we did that quite a bit this trip.

On to Brussels, and we arrived after another couple of hours on the train. I spent the time dozing off, watching the scenery, writing in my journal, and enjoying not having to do much of anything. It was a good way to travel.

My first impressions of Brussels – very old, but liberal. The city was fun to walk around in, and the people around us seemed to be slightly more eccentric than what we found in Koblenz. I liked the feel of the city, but it was very crowded and there were a lot of cars like any big city, and that kind of detracted from the old feeling I got.

From Brussels station we walked across town to find our hotel (NH Hotel Brussels City Center), after a few wrong turns. It was in a good location, and also very clean. The staff were a little flaky, though, and they couldn’t figure out how to process my credit card correctly. Turned out that the machine was out of paper… huh. We unloaded our stuff and went to look for something easy to eat close by. Ended up on a touristy street eating at a restaurant called Montenegro. Eastern European food that was nothing special, but the beer was good and the atmosphere of eating on the street was fun. Some street entertainers walked by now and then and included transvestite magicians and a sax player. How’s that for liberal?

We headed back to our room and enjoyed one of the bottles of wine from Rudelsheim, and then crashed out. Another day, another two countries.

Shanghai, The Rhine River, Koblenz

  • Aug 08, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

Our holiday started with a meet-up in Kobe after Kuniko finished a half day of work. We met in Motomachi, and then went to a restaurant that served yo-shoku, supposedly “western” food like omu-rice, fried shrimp and hamburg. It was pretty good and there was a short wait because it was so popular at lunch hour. From there we went on to Kansai airport and caught a flight to Shanghai shortly thereafter.

We arrived in Shanghai at around 6:30 with about five hours to kill, and a new airport to explore. It started off innocently enough, with a margarita and a do-it-yourself vodka tonic at a nearby bar. Actually there were several similar bars located throughout the airport, but they staggered their closing times, with the central bar (we found out later) open 24 hours.

We walked around looking for an open restaurant, but it seemed like everything was closing around 8 pm. With a departure from the airport schedule for 11:55 pm, we had lots of extra time, so we ended up finding one last open restaurant to have a Chinese feast. The food turned out to be pretty good, but the restaurant was overstaffed, and with just a few customers in a giant restaurant, it was a little unnerving to eat with so many staff standing around watching you (and they did watch you carefully). Also I accidentally over-ordered, so we could finish only about 60% of the meal. Luckily, the food was very cheap thanks to the exchange rate, and so overall it was a marginal success. The staff all tried to speak to Kuniko in Chinese, a fact that was increasingly amusing to me (not to her, though) the longer we were at the airport.

Only after we finished dinner did we realize that there were some other shopping areas and restaurants around, so we ended up having more choices than we knew about. Oh, well. After dinner we had a lot of time to kill, so we walked around the huge airport, and we even had the option to leave and come back – thanks to a strange international transfer system. Normally I need to pay big money for a travel visa because I am an American, but they let me out into the real world, so with a little planning next time we could take the train into town and have some local food. By the end of our stay in the airport we were pretty exhausted, so we were half asleep as we boarded the plane to Frankfurt at midnight.

We flew on China Eastern airlines, which was almost the cheapest flight (only Aeroflot was less) and had a reasonably positive experience. Mainly we slept. The flight lasted about 11 hours, and I slept through five of them, so that was a new personal record for me. The highlight of the trip was the cabin attendants leading group exercises during the last hour of flight. Good idea, interestingly implemented.

Upon touching down at Frankfurt airport we looked out the window and saw rainy conditions, and so that had me a little worried. The first day called for a day on the river cruising and tasting wine, and doing it in the rain didn’t look like fun. Immigration was surprisingly easy – no forms to fill out, just a passport check, a stamp, and then we were in.

We caught a bus from the terminal we were in to the other terminal that had a train station connected, and then found the intercity trains. This was the first time in a long time that we had used European trains, so we were a little confused about the process, and it was a bit stressful finding the right train and the right platform. Looking back at it now we did almost all the right things, but at the time we were feeling a little stress about it, despite all my planning and some support documents that I had brought along.

We ended up on the S9 to the town of Mainz (pronounced Mine-z) but we noticed that the train bypassed our station completely and went to another terminal station. We got out, looked around the station, and realized that we should be back on the same train we came in on. Rushed back to the train and took two stops to the Mainz station. Not sure if we were supposed to do it that way or not, but it only took a few minutes and a little bit of confusion before we got back on the right path. I would suck at the Amazing Race, that’s for sure.

At the station we stopped into the local convenience store to buy “Troy the Sixth” the latest in a long line of small folding umbrellas that we have bought while traveling overseas. Troy the Sixth did a great job, and earned a trip home with us to Japan – a solid purchase. He certainly lasted longer than Troy the Second who died a quick death in Dijon, France.

From the station Kuniko navigated us on foot through the quiet town of Mainz. It was Sunday morning around 8 a.m., so most people were at home sleeping, and almost every shop was closed. Our destination was the Rhine river at the edge of town, and while walking there the rain got heavier and heavier. When we arrived we saw our ship waiting for us Рthe KD cruise line Рand we rushed to catch it just in time. We set up inside in the caf̩/restaurant and had some hot coffee to warm us up, and soon after the ship departed and started cruising down the river.

The scenery was really quite nice – the Rhine is quite a large river and there was plenty of traffic going both ways. There was lots of shipping up and down the river, so it was much busier than I expected. After cruising for about 15 minutes the rain let up, and we went upstairs to enjoy the view from on top of the cruise ship just as blue sky started appearing. By the time we started seeing vineyards, it was sunshine and blue skies, and our spirits rose accordingly. After consulting our guidebooks and some timetables we decided to make a stop at the wine town of Rudelsheim.

Rudelsheim at first glance is a touristy town on the edge of the river surrounded by vineyards and wineries. There was plenty to do while we were there Рwe tasted wine at several places (and bought a bottle of wine at each place to take with us because the prices were so much lower than what we are used to) Рand we also took a gondola up the hillside to enjoy some spectacular views of the river and the wine region. At the top of the hill there was even an old organ grinder guy with a fake monkey. Like I said, it was touristy there. Since we had three hours to kill before the next boat we also enjoyed some (giant) beers at a caf̩, did some shopping and had some delicious sandwiches at a bakery.

The sandwiches looked delicious in the shop window and tasted even better. German bread turned out to be one of the big surprises of the trip – every time we had German bread we were impressed at how delicious it was. Some had dark grain, some had olives or nuts, but all were consistently good wherever we were in Germany.

We were really enjoying taking in the town – interesting architecture, easy to travel by foot, and plenty of surprises around every corner. Eventually we figured it was time to go, so we caught the next boat down the river and continued our journey.

We procured some good seats on the roof of the boat, and continued to enjoy the sunny weather. Our energy level was still high despite being awake for such a long time – which was good because there were still several hours ahead on the boat before we reached our destination.

The next stretch of the river had lots of castles mixed in with all the steep hillside vineyards, and it was interesting to turn the next bend and see another dramatic old castle perched on the mountains. It was a great way to see everything at a slow pace. By late afternoon the day started catching up us, however, and we retired to the restaurant downstairs to enjoy the view through the windows instead of being in the weather. As it turns out it was a good idea – a squall came throw soon after we took a table downstairs, and suddenly the tables around us filled up completely as people came out of the rain.

Finally we reached our destination about halfway down the river to Cologne at a mid-sized town called Koblenz. The boat stopped at the Deutsch Eck, a waterside area that was under some construction when we arrived. From there we walked across town through a large street festival to find our hotel. It was a simple, clean business hotel and it was nice to unload our backpacks (finally) after carrying them around all day. I guess it didn’t help that we bought a couple of bottles of wine during the day – those are heavy.

After dropping off our gear and cleaning up a bit we asked our hotel clerk for restaurant recommendations, and she suggested a great local restaurant called Alt Koblenz. It was just down the street in the corner of a city square, and they served lots of local specialties. We had some local wine by the glass and our first dinner in Germany: Kuniko had the weinerschnitzel with egg on top as a variation, and I had “Deutsch Eck Toast” – grilled pork with mushrooms served over toast with coleslaw. Very delicious, and after a failed search for an open supermarket we retired to bed to get some much-needed rest.