Monday, July 29

We're off for our Germany adventure. Which means we had to leave the house in Soest at 7:30. Just a little earlier than either couple is used to. I take the first shift of driving and we fire up Louise (Tom-Tom) and off we go. Its a coolish, sunny day and we enter Cologne, Germany on time just a little after 10:00. The Rick Steves book said we could park virtually under the cathedral and that's exactly what we did. We wanted to get there in time for the 10:30 English language tour of the cathedral and we made it with 15 minutes to spare.

The cathedral is very impressive. Even though it is almost completely black on the outside from air pollution, it soars in Gothic splendor. In side, it is even more impressive. Our tour guide tells us about how there was an  old church on this site in 800 AD, but it was later demolished and the new one was started in the 12th century. There were a lot of interruptions and the final work was not completed until the  late 19th century. Its claim to fame is that they believe some of the remains  of  the Maji, from the Jesus story, are contained within a shrine inside the church. The shrine is a large golden box situated behind the altar. There are 4 Magi depicted in the carved sides of the shrine. The fourth is the king who gave all of the money to construct it. Its good to be rich.

After our tour, we walked across the square for lunch. We sat down under an awning and the rain started. It  poured for awhile, but we just needed to adjust our table a little to stay dry. After eating, we got back on the road and headed for Bacharach - about 2 hours and 45 minutes. The road is an interstate-like highway with no speed limits most of the time. I kept the car at about 80 mph most of the time. We checked into our B&B that Dan had previously reserved for us Hotel zur Post, asked a few questions about the town and the Rhine cruise that we wanted to take, and were off. Rick Steves suggested visiting this town and he was right - very nice.

We found a nice restaurant with seating on the street to have a glass of wine and some beer while we waited for our cruise. Our waitress Bregit, was charming and fun and joked with us. She especially liked Dan. As we left, we booked an outside table for 7:00.

We selected the 40 minute Rhine cruise because Rick Steves said this portion of the Rhine was the most scenic. It was. We spent most of the time standing on the upper bow deck taking pictures of cute castles, buildings, wine vineyards, and other boats. We took the train back in about 10 minutes. We decided not to go back to our room because we would have had to climb 4 flights of stairs, so we got to  the restaurant 15 minutes early.. Bregit was waiting for us and we had  a good dinner. Then back to the  room to end our first day in Germany.