This holiday weekend allowed the King's to take a short trip to Germany. Just a three hour drive on Friday afternoon (mostly during nap time!) and we arrived in Bacharach. The Rhine valley produces most of Germany's riesling wines as the grapes are grown on the sloping hills all along the river which contain the perfect balance of minerals due to the sun catching reflection to the soil. So basically theres a fairytale looking village with half-timbered buildings, set on the river, vineyards covering the rolling hills in the background, and most towns have a castle perched at the top...Wunderbar! Most of the wine producers set up "weinguts" which are little bars in the towns for people to try a carousel of different wines usually arranged from dry to sweet, mostly riesling.
Saturday we took a morning boat ride down the Rhine to a town called St Goar. I had my guidebook and we learned about all the different castles that we passed along the way. Most of the castles were built as tax collection stations for boats that used the Rhine for shipping goods. We had a great table (the boat had a restaurant of course) right at the front on the window. Out of nowhere, all the Japanese tourists on the boat came running up around us, snapping photos at the cliff ahead, which made us aware of the legend of the Lorelei. We had never heard of this, but she was a water spirit said to have sung an enchanting song causing ships to crash into the rocks. Supposedly there is an echo-ing that occurs here which is the "song". Didn't hear anything..but my book said that Japanese tourists are crazy about this site/legend! True!
St Goar was similar to Bacharach (same formula: cute town, vineyards, river, church, cobblestones and castle!) This castle called Burg Reinfelds was a pretty cool one, massive, and lots of fun dark passageways and arrow shooting holes. Great view from the top too.
Sofie had her first taste of spatzle. She loved it! Used her hands and face too :)
Sunday we tried out the new backpack on a 45 minute hike up to the Burg Eltz, a much more well taken care of castle in the Mosel valley. Great castle, pretty hike through the woods and Sofie loved the new backpack.
That night we stayed in Bernkastle-Kues another really sweet town but this time on the Mosel river. We went to another weingut where "Jakob" the wine producer chatted non stop about the 6 different wines he had poured us- speaking completely in German while we smiled and nodded. We understood nothing but it didn't discourage him. The funny Abott and Costello moment was when Chris tried to buy a bottle of wine number "2" or "zwei",holding up one finger to indicate how many we wanted, while referring to it as the "dry" or what Jakob heard as "drei" meaning three in German. Needless to say we ended up with two bottles of wine- and we aren't sure if they were even the ones we tried :)
Good times, good castles, good streusel!
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