Europe Part 8: Something slightly more relaxing

The next day we managed to get up and moving at a fairly reasonable hour, though the city was still clearly in the throngs of the recovery effort from it’s collective hangover. We checked out of the hotel, the owner was kind enough to let us use his computer to get a train schedule, and then walked back to the train station. The roads were an even bigger mess than they had been the previous night. I was actually kind of chuffed to see a street sweeper whose primary use was to vacuum out the rails where the trams go. It was pretty neat looking.


Messy.

The train took use out of the Netherlands and into Germany. Watching the view from the train was really nice. The whole place was as green and pretty as Costa Rica, albeit a little less crazy in its vegetation, the whole thing punctuated with tiny little german towns with close architecture and little beer signs. After a lot of time on the train we arrived in our first German Stop: St. Goar, on a very picturesque stretch of the Rine river. Our original plan was to try and take a boat up and/or down the river (it’s free on days when we used our Eurail pass) but it was nearly 2:30 by the time we got to St. Goar and we didn’t want to hurry ourselves. We’d take the boat tomorrow.

The hotel owner was very nice and he recommended we head right up to the castle ruins St. Goar is so famous for: Rheinfels Castle. We took a little tram up the (pretty steep) hill and took our time checking it out. The Castle is immensely old, though quite torn apart by both the ravages of time and, as I understand it, Napoleon. The castle housed a tiny museum, but we didn’t stay there too long except to check out the tombstone from 400 B.C. and a wine barrel head a good three meters across.


That's a really big castle.

After that we strolled around the castle. A lot of the old fortifications were still intact and it was impressive to imagine that back in its day, this sort of building was considered luxurious. It was dark, drafty, and all the halls were tiny. There were several small (and I mean *small*) spiral staircases with no light at all. The whole thing reminded me of what we imagine a dungeon looks like in popular mythology. The whole castle probably looked that dark and brooding.


I guess people used to be shorter

This castle also sported an impressive collection of underground tunnels and bolt holes. We wandered through some of them with the tiny little flashlights that we brought expressly for this purpose. Then we ended our tour in the gargantuan cellar. It must have made a king feel very good to see that whole area stocked with food.


Where the hot pockets at?

After our tour we walked back down the hill and made our way into town. I was tired so Jess picked dinner: a little spot that served both Itallian and German food. We got beefsteak and porksteak, variations on which seem to form the core of traditional german food. Jess ate a lot of my onions. Then we hit up a store from some gelato and then walked along the Rhine river while we ate. Another definite highlight for us both. We unwound back at the hotel with Rummy, which we played a lot of. Jess plays it a lot better than I do so she spent most of the early part of our trip kicking my butt at cards.

-N