Bingen

This weekend was wonderful!!! Me, Kate, Ashley and E met Jan in Bingen. We toured the lovely city, then took a boat ride on the Rhine River. WOW. Breath-taking, amazing, beautiful! There were castles and ruins galore. I couldn't believe it. Then we got off at Assmannshausen (lol) and took a chair lift up the hill to walk half an hour through the woods. There were inch worms hanging from trees and falling all over us, in our hair, on our clothes, I was thoroughly disgusted. Yikes. But then we made it to the Niederwalddenkmal (Germania), a statue from 1877 which celebrated Germany getting land back from France. Then we took another chair lift down the other side of the mountain over vineyards. We walked through Ruedesheim and did some touristy souvenir shopping, then caught a ferry back to Bingen. We kept getting stuck at railroad crossings.

After that we hit Bacharach, an old German town with typical Fachwerkhaeuser (half-timbered houses) from the 1300s and 1500s. It was so cool. Also, we had a coffee at a restaurant where the Knights of Templar (anyone read The Da Vinci Code?) used to meet. Then we went back to Jan's, where his mother had made us homemade pizzas. Yummm! Next we hit a very small and local wine festival and carnival. We shot at things and the boys won us roses and I won Ashley a butterfly. Jan bought us girls tickets to ride the flying cars and we laughed our heads off. Then we tasted some of the wine.

The next morning we slept in, had a lovely breakfast outside in the sun, and walked about five minutes to get to more vineyards. I couldn't believe all the vineyards I saw and got to walk through.

We didn't get the bus we wanted on the way back b/c it was Sunday and instead of coming every hour, it only came ever two hours, so we had to get a taxi for the five of us, and the train was coming so soon that the boys ran to the platform and stood in the doors of the train so it couldn't leave without us! LOL. That was pretty entertaining. We were also quite the multicultural group, with me, Kate from England, Ash from Canada, Jan from Germany and E from the Netherlands. Someone stopped us to ask where we were all from. hee hee.

After we got back, we settled in, then E, Ash and I went to the park to read and ordered pizza! I was hilarious, b/c E had to meet the guy at the edge of the park. I'd never ordered pizza to the park before. Great fun.

We all are eating dinner together tonight, and then Rita's sister heads back to Portugal.

I will upload my pics from the weekend online soon. It was so great!