Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning was a very successful travel morning. We got up and out the door as planned. We caught the same 9:06 bus to Colmar that we used yesterday so we knew exactly what to do and even knew our bus driver this morning. We did not wait until the absolute last second to run out the door of our hotel so we were able to walk leisurely to the bus stop and while the girls waited I made a stop at the Cannelle patisserie and then hit the downtown boulangerie for our pain (bread) for the morning. Liesl has decided that she adores French bread and for the past two days that is all that she will eat so this morning I got her her own baguette.

The boulangerie in town has been closed whenever we happened to be walking by and the sign has been gone for what looks like decades so when I noticed smoke coming from its chimney this morning and then saw that there was someone inside and the door was opened I was really surprised. We had wondered where people got their bread in this town. It was worth a stop as the bread was excellent and oh so cheap.

On the bus ride to the Gare de Colmar (one stop past the Theater District where we stopped yesterday) we met a fellow American traveler from Tennessee who was on his way to the Unterlinden. We talked the whole way from Neuf-Brisach to Colmar. Liesl gave him one of our Kidding Around Europe stickers and he gave us his business card so that we could email him to get his blog information as he is recording his trips as well.

On a train a few days ago Luciana was walking around and I overheard someone make a comment about how cute she was and I picked up a southern accent so I stopped and asked if they were American and it turned out not only that they were American but that they were Texan and not only that they were Texan but that they were from Denton – the same county as us! Small world.

One of the things that I love about traveling in Europe is how much that every rail or bus journey is a place where people meet – everyone talks to each other here. This is even more amazing when you think about the fact that no two people speak the same language. Everyone just makes do and figures out how to communicate.

That is one of the big secrets of European communication – don’t be afraid, just do your best and everyone else tries too. I think that Americans often think that Europeans all understand each other but they don’t at all. Here in the Alsace, for example, French is almost universally understood but a small majority prefer to speak in Alsatian, a heavily varied dialect of German (for example, Guten Tag in German is Gueta Tag in Alsatian with a different pronunciation of Tag as well – tog versus tag.) But of people speak “normal” German as well. Here and there people speak English. But you never know what someone will speak until you start talking to them. It is really amazing.

While riding the buses in the Alsace I’ve noticed that the people on the bus while often speaking French to us speak to each other almost exclusively in some dialect of German. German definitely seems to remain the vernacular of choice from what I have observed although in town French certainly appears to be more common. At the restaurant at the hotel, though, German was almost exclusively in use by the patrons. When locals speak in English, which is rare, the accent seems to be a blend of German and French.

The Gare de Colmar is not very big and getting to our TER Alsace train was easy. We took the local run from Colmar to Mulhouse where we got off and transferred to the TER Alsace Mulhouse to Bale (Basel) line which took us to the very small town of Bartenheim where we are staying for the next two nights.

Bartenheim is certainly not a tourist town. It has no attractions at all and is a very small Alsatian town sitting just north of the Alsace’s southernmost airport. The town is so far off of the “beaten path” (technically it lies right along a very beaten path but is a stop that no one makes) that when we prepared to disembark from the train at Bartenheim the train conductor actually stopped us and asked us where we intended to go because as clearly not locals going to Bartenheim was pretty surprising.

Getting out at the Gare de Bartenheim reinforces that this is not intended, in any way, to be a tourist stop. The gare (trainstation) is nearly a full kilometer outside of the village and there are not even signs pointing you towards or away from town! You are dropped off at what is essential a country stop and left to fend for yourself.

The walk into Bartenheim proper was brutal with our luggage and carrying Luciana and pushing Liesl in the stroller. The entire walk is exposed to the sun and it was twenty degrees Celsius and quite humid as we walked into town. We were really looking forward to cleaning up in the hotel room by the time that we got to the center of town.

Our hotel, the Lion Rouge, is, as far as I can tell, the only hotel in Bartenheim and is located right on the central square, the Plaza of the Republic. There is a fountain in the middle of town but it was all torn up for repairs when we arrived. The walk from the gare to the square did serve as a nice introduction to town and it was clear from our walk that while Bartenheim might be unknown to tourists it is definitely a happy, affluent town.

I can’t believe it but our hotel here in Bartenheim is excellent. So far Dominica is batting a thousand on our hotels. We have not had a bad one yet and there have been some pretty crazy long shots in there like the last one and this one. Our room here has two regular adult beds so that Dominica and I can sleep separately. They provided a pack and play for Luciana and a large crib for Liesl. Even though it is meant for younger kids, Liesl thinks that it is cool as it is like a wooden cage but it is pressed up against Dominica’s bed so Liesl can easily climb in and out of it. Our bathroom here is quite nice and spacious and en suite. So far, every hotel that we have used we would recommend to others. I am so impressed with the prices and quality in Europe.

It was still on the early side when we settled into the hotel only around eleven. We are generally pretty tired and want some time to relax so today is a “no plans” day. When we booked this day originally we thought that we would ambitiously be heading straight into Switzerland for the day. Oh how foolish we were. We need a bit of a down day and Bartenheim is a perfect place to just stop and sit and do nothing as a pause in our vacation. Plus I have a ton of work that has to be completed by tomorrow night. So Bartenheim is our stop that allows me to do that.

We took a quick trip out to the children’s park right off of the square. It is tiny but has a rubberized mat, a bouncy car and a small slide and is fenced and gated. Liesl saw it on the way to the hotel and wanted to go play. It is well shaded so a perfect spot to just sit and see village life. Right next to the park is a little shack that is a sandwich and coffee shop. Just pick enough for someone to go in, order a sandwich and take it to go. So we got a cheese (fromage) sandwich, a tuna (thon) sandwich and some pastries and went to the park.

We are our “picnic” lunch which was very nice, especially the tunafish salad sandwich, and watched the girls play. Luciana mostly just walked around the rubber mat being perfect for her. She did make several attempts to climb up the stairs to the slide so I had to keep rescuing her. She is doing very well at that and made it all of the way up on her own once too! She got to come down the slide (with my help) too which is her first slide ever. Liesl mostly busied herself playing a pretend game of going to the grocery store in the bouncy car and pretending to store things in its trunk. It is so cute watching her amazing imaginative play.

While we were sitting there Dominica sent me out on a walk to discover what was around, especially looking for a market. So I walked around a bit and discovered very little. It was a nice enough walk, though, and I got to see a good portion of this small town. I was amazed to find that behind nearly all of the houses in town were ancient half-timber barns being used as massive storage sheds. These must all be four hundred years old (I confirmed that many of the houses were from around the first years after 1600.) Even in this little, “modern” feeling town it turns out that a large percentage of the houses are two to five hundred years old. That is crazy. In America this would be the biggest tourist attraction ever. Here, it is just a town no one knows.

We returned to the hotel from the park when it was time for me to work. When my lunch break rolled around Dominica sent me down to the lobby to ask how to find a market. There is no one who really speaks English here but we make do. They know way more English than we know French, that’s for sure.

It turns out that the only grocery store is outside of town, past the train station, about a kilometer away. So I set off of a decent walk.

One of my favourite things to do in a foreign country is to go to the grocery stores and markets. It is a cheap way to experience every day life. Everything is different in a foreign grocery store (even Montreal is wildly different than New York and they are next door cities to one another) and being in a foreign grocery store in a different language really makes it a fun challenge.

I picked up snacks, fruit, diapers, baby formula and other essential supplies. Two kilometers round trip. I am starting to know my way around town now.

This evening was dedicated to work and homework. That is all that I did. I made good progress, I think, on my homework and believe that I have around half of it down with tomorrow night completely dedicated to getting the other half wrapped up. Once that is done I do believe that my class at RIT will be completed with nothing more needed from me whatsoever. Originally the professor had scheduled a presentation session for tonight (read: three to five in the morning for me) but that was cancelled and moved to Sunday night (same deal, early Monday morning) but so few people were able to make it work that both have been cancelled and they are not being rescheduled. So my class will be over and done with.

Tomorrow is also my final evening of work for the office. The market closes early tomorrow so I am hopeful that work will wrap up on the early side for a Friday. Once I am done with my Friday night deployments and any Friday night system maintenance work (none scheduled, but stuff comes up) I have a normal weekend (not officially “on call” but still official available if escalations are needed) followed by Memorial Day Monday (a bank holiday so we are off but, again, I am available for escalations is necessary) followed by my stored up furlough time starting Tuesday morning and going for three full weeks! Ah, the sweet feel of vacation. So, for all intents and purposes, I am totally free and clear of all regular obligations around five in the morning tomorrow night. I can’t wait!

The only thing that I did tonight beyond my class work is one additional walking trip around town seeking out a café to get coffee from for Dominica. I walked probably another one to two kilometers and finding nothing. The only place that appears to be open is the very high end restaurant in our hotel. So, in the end, I went to the front desk and requested a carafe of coffee for Dominica and I and a basket of bread for Liesl as that is all that she wants to eat these days. The restaurant in the hotel, like the one the last two nights, looks great and appears to be the center of gastronomic delight in the local town.

Tomorrow we will be touring Bern. I am so excited. Probably no place, except perhaps Vienna, on our trip is as important to me as Bern. I have always wanted to see Switzerland so badly and Bern especially both because of the city itself and also because it is associated with the ancestral backgrounds on both sides of my family. Bern is very high on Dominica’s bucket list of European destinations as well. So we have to be up decently early tomorrow so that we can get Bern in before needed to be back in time for work.

My work schedule is really odd while doing this European vacation. I don’t need to be signed in to the office until around four thirty in the afternoon. Talk about weird. We put in a full day and then I start working and work until after midnight. It really throws me off.

Tonight, before going to bed, we felt Luciana and she felt pretty warm. We took her temperature and it is elevated but not a fever. Around ninety-nine degrees or ninety-nine and a half. She appears to be a little under the weather but it is hard to tell. We have been pushing her hard with our schedule and so often she has been unable to fall asleep and nap when she should that we are sure that she is quite run down at this point. So this could be anything. We hope that she is just teething.

Today we managed to get up early, get ready and race out the door. We are getting better about acknowledging that we need to take the early trains or buses and that being lazy and waiting for later ones bites us every time whether we know why or not. Getting moving is important.

So today we needed to catch the 9:06 bus from Neuf-Brisach to Colmar. Colmar was our original intended destination here in the Alsace but we had been unable to get a hotel there which lead us to look further afield and ultimately lead us to Neuf-Brisach. Colmar is the second largest city of the Alsace, after the much larger Strassbourg, and is also the European home to Timkin roller bearing from Canton, Ohio. Colmar is recommended by Rick Steves and is features on his Alsace episode of Rick Steves’ The Best of Europe which we have seen many times. Dominica really wanted to come see Colmar. Colmar is the Alsace’s answer to Belgium’s Brugge (Bruges) with its well preserved old town.

To give a feel for just how small Neuf-Brisach is, the bus station is on the far side of town from our hotel and we left our hotel just six minutes before the bus was supposed to depart from the station. This gave us plenty of time (although we did cut it foolishly close) to walk from our hotel to the bus station and still wait for a few minutes before the bus arrived. We did not have enough time to get breakfast in town, though.

The bus ride takes roughly forty minutes and is quite comfortable. Buses in France are clean and comfortable, much like they are in the United Kingdom and nothing like in the US. Normal people take the bus here and ours was full of high school students. We are a bit baffled by the movement of students that we see on public transportation here. We can’t tell if these are some sort of special students, if the towns have so few children that they are aggregating everyone in the local cities or what. We know that the birth rates in most of Europe are extremely low but what we are seeing appears to be absurd. The population would not be stagnating but crashing from the low number of children that we have seen.

The bus driver spoke decent English and was very helpful. The French countryside here in the Alsace (Elsaβ) is gorgeous. Extremely flat, which I never expected and very warm. Colmar is the second driest city in all of France and this causes it to be often considered the finest maker of dry Alsatian wines. On the German side of the Rhine, not far away, there is much more rain and they are known for their sweet wines of the same varietals. The Finger Lakes wine region in New York is famous for mimicking both regions but leans heavily towards the German, rather than Alsatian, styles.

We got off of the bus in the Colmar Theater district which is directly against the Unterlinden, Colmar’s outstanding museum with some of the most important medieval art on display in the world. The well preserved Old Town and Unterlinden are the two big attractions bringing in nearly all of the tourism.
It was straight in to the Unterlinder for us which was perfect as we arrived right after they opened and the museum was basically empty when we arrived. This gave us an hour or two to explore the museum with no crowds at all and, more importantly, we were not in peoples’ way as we went around with two small children. The museum provides multi-lingual audio guides included in the price of admission which is really nice.

It was nice getting to see a museum and Liesl did very well and enjoyed seeing the paintings. I held her in my arms for much of the museum and she actually looked at the paintings and sculptures. We are very proud of how well she did but there is no doubt that it did not take very long before she was entirely bored with the whole prospect and ready to go. Luciana thought that the whole thing was awful. She did not want to be quiet and she wanted to run around. Not good things for a museum.

The major attraction at the Unterlinden and the reason that we were taking the time to go there ourselves is the world’s most famous alterpiece is there and it is a piece that Dominica studied in college and always wanted to see in person and it is one that I know from my own art studies as well. By the time that we got to the alterpiece, though, Liesl was restless and Luciana had completely had it. So other than just glancing at the alterpiece, I spent the time while Dominica and Liesl looked at walking Luciana repeatedly around the courtyard.

As we went to leave the museum the crowds were coming in force and it was actually hard to leave from the throngs of museum patrons flooding into the museum. We were definitely the only people brave enough, or crazy enough, to do a museum with little children and, in reality, about the only people there at all who were not retired.

I had known that doing a museum, especially an art museum, with little children was a very bad idea but Dominica has been harboring grand visions of visiting all of the art museums that she has always wanted to see (the big ones like Firenze, Madrid and Barcelona are yet to come.) After this morning’s adventure she is rapidly reconsidering that idea and is thinking about skipping Firenze (Florence) completely and saving it for a trip when she can go to the museums. I had been hoping to squeeze in The Praddo in Madrid but that is clearly out of the question. We will probably do no more museums. They are stressful for us, a waste of money and completely unenjoyable for the girls at this point. Some day we will be excited to come do a museum tour of Europe with them but this is not the time.

After the museum we walked to the Old Town to check out the preserved parts of Colmar. Colmar is definitely a beautiful town with tons of amazing buildings. The Old Town is pretty much overrun with tourists, though, and it is all shops dedicated to them. Souvenir shops, candy shops, ice cream, cafes, etc. Tons of really expensive restaurants.

It was actually hard to see Colmar with the density of tourists everywhere. It is a bit like being in Walt Disney World, the same feeling that we got our last morning in Brugge, with every restaurant and shop full of tourists and not of locals.

We walked around a bit but avoided doing one of the tourist tram rides because the price was so high. The old cobblestone streets made pushing the stroller really difficult. At one point we tried to get coffee in a quiet café but the moment that we sat down a tour group took over the seating so we left. The whole town is full of tour groups. It’s terrible.

We went to the local market in Colmar which was awesome. That was way better than going to a restaurant in town. Buying food like the locals is a more valuable experience and the food quality is really excellent.

After the market we took a gondola ride through Colmar’s “Little Venice” down the canals. They are pretty short and probably not something to do with kids but it was nice and we got to see parts of town that we would not have otherwise seen.

By the time that we left Colmar we were pretty tired. Colmar is definitely a town to just come in, see for a day, and zip back to some other base of operations. Colmar is too touristy to be a place to stay for very long.

We had a little complexity figuring out the bus back and ended up having to wait an extra hour because we had read the schedule wrong so we went back into Colmar for a bit, got ice cream and a lollipop for Liesl at a candy shop.

We got back to Neuf-Brisach and I got to work for the office for the afternoon. This is my final week of needing to work before my real vacation begins. We are all exhausted and I can’t wait to be done with work and Dominica can’t wait for me to be free to help out with the kids and for our schedule to be flexible. My working for the office and doing homework while traveling is really taking a toll on us.

Luciana was already asleep by the time that my “lunch break” rolled around and Liesl was just hanging out in bed getting ready to fall asleep and Dominica was exhausted and laying in bed listening to Rick Steves’ Postcards from Europe. So I went out to see if I could make it to all thirty-one points on the historical walk of Neuf-Brisach that is published by the tourist office. We have seen several of these since we got into town yesterday but haven’t attempted to do the “trail.”
My goal for this afternoon is to take pictures at each of the trail stops and along the way. The trail starts at the main square in the middle of town and winds through the streets and leads out of town and all over the defensive structures that define the town. It was quite a walk. A lot of climbing and the mileage really racked up once I started walking back and forth around town. It gave me a really good overview of the town, though, and by the time that I was done I had seen pretty much every inch of town. And I was exhausted.

I got back to the hotel room and was all hot and sweaty as I had been moving very quickly trying to fit everything in to my limited available time. I did it, though. At the end I had covered the entire trail and have pictures of every station. I really like how they set this up. It is a nice way to make the entire town into a free museum since the town does not get enough tourists to justify a tour business.

Dominica had wanted me to bring home dinner but I was so sweaty from all of the exercise (it was quite warm to begin with, I was racing and most of the trail takes place in the “moat” around town where there is little fresh air) so I decided to come home first, change and then go out looking for food. I did discover that there were a lot of restaurants open late which we had not been expecting. We were worried that there would be very little food in this town and that what was there would close early.

We decided to just eat in the hotel again because they were great last night and it would be so much easier. So I went down and ordered us some Rosti Provencal for Dominica and Tarte Flambae (flammenkuechen) for me. We also got some traditional Alsatian ice cream based dessert for Dominica and I to split. Liesl joined us as she had roused herself to be up a while longer and we all camped out on Dominica and my bed and had a bit of a picnic in the hotel room. It was really nice. We had a very nice final night in Neuf-Brisach.

Tomorrow morning we are up early and moving a little ways further south in the Alsace to Bartenheim south of Mulhouse just ten kilometers off of the Swiss border near Basel. This will be our launching point for exploring western Switzerland around Bern.

ХудожникLuciana got us up at six thirty this morning.  Who needs an alarm clock when you have a Luciana?  So Dominica got right up and jumped in to the shower and Luciana hung out with me.  This is a bit earlier than we had meant to get up this morning but it works out well giving us lots of time to do what we need to do.

We were able to be a little leisurely this morning as we had an hour and a half even before the front desk would open.  We were down for breakfast right at eight.  We brought all of the luggage down, ate breakfast letting the girls skip eating breakfast and instead just play with the toys that the hotel provides for them as this would be their last chance to do so and checked out of the hotel.  We are definitely sad to be leaving Boppard and the Hotel Hunrucker Hof – they have just been awesome.

We took the path towards the train station that ran by the Roman ruins in town as I only saw them by accident on the first night not knowing what they were and only seeing them in the pitch darkness while I was out searching for food.  Dominica had gone to see them in the daylight while I was working the other day so the pictures that we posted on Flickr were all from her.  I only got a minute to see them today but at least I got a chance to check them out.  I am certain that we will be bringing the girls back to Boppard when they are older.  This is a great town.  And you never know, our stay here might have convinced Dominica that this is the place to be.  Neither of us feels that we could go wrong in Boppard.

It was a warm and decently long walk to the baunhof (train station) but we got there without incident, found the platform and pretty soon the train was there whisking us easily off to Mainz in Hessia.  Mainz is one of my ancestral cities.  My mother’s father’s family claims heritage back to Mainz (long, long ago.)  This is the first time, ever, that I have been in Europe and actually passed through a place that I know that my relatives did.  I have probably crossed paths with thousands of them thousands of times but I never know for sure when or where.  We didn’t get to see Mainz, though, just wait at the platform.  While there we grabbed coffee and a little pizza for Dominica and I to split and a pizza pretzel (brezel) for Liesl who loves pretzels.

Our train going from Mainz to Freiburg was delayed ten minutes which worried us as we have little time then to make our next connection in Freiburg.  We should not have worried, SBB is very much on top of these things.  And it was SBB (Swiss National Railways) who took over for us for the next part of our journey (the trip to Freiburg continues on to Basel and Zurich.)  The SBB train was even nicer than the DB trains.  SBB had huge first class cars set aside for us and no “levels” to climb up and down.  They have very wide aisles so we can actually move through them with the luggage and strollers and they had an all our restaurant car!

We did partake of the restaurant car.  I was dying of thirst so got a vitamin fruit juice thing and Dominica and I split a cheese plate of assorted very high end Swiss cheeses which were amazing.  The cheese plate was totally the right choice.  I got it knowing that I needed additional protein.  Eating in first class at the restaurant on SBB is not cheap, so be warned.  But it is really nice.  Just a bowl of soup is around $35.

The journey on SBB was great.  Quiet and we had almost an entire first class cabin to ourselves so the girls were free to walk all over the place, spread out to other chairs, make noise, etc.  That was perfect for this, the longest leg of our trip today lasting nearly two hours.  It was incredible easy and comfortable.

In Freiburg we transfered to a small, local train carrier.  That train was totally crowded, standing room only and not much room for that.  That trip was pretty short, though.

We arrived in Brisach, Germany and from there caught the local bus to take us over the border to the French town of Neuf-Brisach in the Alsace.  The bus ride was only about thirteen minutes and very easy to do.  That is good since we will be needing to take the same bus tomorrow when we go to Colmar to do our morning sight seeing.

We got dropped off by the bus right in the middle of Neuf-Brisach on the main square and in front of the tourist information office.  So we popped in there and picked up a map of town – not that you need one in a town this small but it is handy for finding all of the UNESCO heritage locations.  There are thirty one things to see of historic importance, according to the map, in this town.  Pretty impressive for one of the smallest towns that I have ever seen.

We had some serious time to kill since we arrived in town around one in the afternoon and the hotel doesn’t open for check ins until four thirty.  At least three hours to kill.  Ouch.  That is tough with the little ones.

We started by hanging out at a cafe on the main town square.  The food was good but it was hard to order since no one speaks English.  Here everyone speaks French and German but English is pretty rare.  Even though the town is an UNESCO Heritage Site I don’t get the impression that many tourists, especially those from very far afield, come through town.  I have yet to meet anyone who has even heard of it – including people that I would consider to be pretty much local to it.

Our first impression of town is that there are cars absolutely everywhere and they are hideous.  The town square, which dominates the village, has been converted into a parking lot.  The fountain there is disables or broken and all around the square is parking.  In fact, the entire town is parking.  There are cars everywhere.  The traffic is really intense and yet no one lives here.  This is a great example of a European town that has thrown away its inherent advantage in the name of “progress.”  It is so sad to see the amazing potential of this town and no wonder it is not a thriving tourist attraction – the place is ugly, noisy and lifeless because every inch of it is covered in parked cars.  No one is in the square like they should be.  No one is walking around.  People pull up to the cafe in a car, run in and drive away.  This town is perfectly designed to be full of pedestrians but instead is all cars and no people.

We sat in the cafe for a while.  Luciana was anxious to walk – which is awful here as there is nowhere in town that isn’t meant for car traffic.  The sidewalks are horrible and in some places don’t even exist and the square is a parking lot.  So we walked as best as we could away from the cars but it was less than ideal.

From there we went to the market on the square to get some supplies then hit another patisserie to see what they had and stocked up on goodies there too.  Then we went back to the hotel just to be sure that no one returned early – they didn’t.  Then we walked around town, and by that I truly mean that we walked around it, until it was time to return at four thirty and get checked in.

The hotel was open when we returned and we got checked straight in as easy as could be.  The hotel, on the outside, is this old, run down structure that looks ancient and in disrepair like everything else in town.  I am sure that no business here can do anything to modify the buildings because of the historical status.  On the inside, however, is a really nice, completely modern hotel.  We did not expect this at all.

The hotel room is awesome. We actually have three beds in this room with a semi-dividing wall so that Dominica and I have a double bed on one side and there are two single beds on the other side.  This is good as Liesl really appreciated having her own space and sleeps far better when she does.  We had a pack and play brought up for Luciana as well.  She only is happy when she has one and the moment that it arrives she gets so excited and tries to climb into it.

I got set up right away and got to work.    It seems that we are always in a complete panic to get somewhere so that I can start working.  What a pain that is.  We cannot wait for Saturday when that is all over and we can really just relax.

This hotel room is really good for me to be working. The Internet access is excellent and there are two different desks from which I can work.

We are really thrilled with this hotel room.  We had a feeling that this was going to be a real case of “making do” with a hotel in this odd little town but this is quite the opposite.  This entire trip we have really been blessed with excellent hotels that have really been making it so much better than it might have been.  All four hotels that we have used thus far we would recommend and would use again.

After I worked for a while and we got all settled into the hotel we went down to the restaurant in the hotel basement for our first Alsatian dinner.  Dominica got rosti and I got tarte flambée also known as flammkuchen or Alsatian pizza.  We also got an onion tart to split.  It was all really good.  Liesl is loving French baguettes and that is all that she wanted for dinner.  Dominica and I split a half litre of local dry Alsatian Riesling.

After dinner we came back up to the room and Luciana decided to crawl into her pack and play (it has a baby entrance at floor level that is really cool) and put herself to bed.  Liesl ate her first ever Kinder Surprise which we found for her at the grocery store today and she was really excited about that and then within a few minutes was in bed herself.  The moment that the girls were down Dominica went to bed too and was probably asleep by nine thirty!

I had to stay up and work, of course, but did decide to go to bed on the early side tonight.  Even thought everything went smoothly today it was still an exhausting day.  Tomorrow we are here in Neuf-Brisach again but will be spending the morning in Colmar.  The day after tomorrow we have to move again but are not moving far at all and will still be in France, just closer to Basel.

Today is our day to cruise the Rhine from Boppard to Bingen. Or at least that was the plan.  We were also supposed to get up nice and early and make the nine o’clock cruise.  Well, needless to say, that didn’t happen.

We had several logistical challenges this morning.  The first was that I was very tired after staying up late working on my course work for RIT last night.  That could not be helped.

The second was that we had to switch hotel rooms today.  We had extended our stay in Boppard and originally had been told that we could stay but not in the same room that we were currently in.  Not ideal but way better than switching to different accommodations completely.  We are dreading each hotel change now that we’ve done it a few times.  We are attempting to reduce those whenever possible now.  But Dominica had issues getting into the hotel lobby this morning – the hotel is pretty much empty after the weekend and they decided to sleep in I guess so breakfast opened late.

The hotel managed to let us stay in our same hotel room for another night which is awesome.  So we needn’t have waited on speaking to them this morning but that allowed me to sleep in so it was not all bad.  I needed the sleep.

So we had a late breakfast in the hotel and then packed up and set out for a walk down to the waterfront to catch the cruise ship.  The walk is very quick down to the river from the Hotel Hunrucker Hof where we have been staying the last several days.  Only a few minutes.  We got down there plenty early and waited in the queue for our cruise ship to arrive.

We were definitely the young ones getting onto the cruise ship.  The average age was likely sixty or higher.  It was the Goethe, a large Rhine paddle steamer which was the advantage of having been running late this morning and taking the eleven o’clock tour rather than the nine o’clock tour.  This is the more touristy of the two tours with the old fashioned, larger boat.  Kind of cool, though.

The boat ride was really great.  It was overcast and we were expecting rain and storms this morning but they never came.  It started out cool and overcast which was perfect for the boat ride up the Rhine.  We started in Boppard intending to go all of the way down to Bingen which would pretty much allow us to see the entirety of the Middle Rhine region (also known as the Rhine Gorge) which is generally considered the most picturesque and romantic portion of the Rhine as it is the section with the high mountainous terrain and the castles around every bend.

The journey upriver truly was magical.  We sat outside and literally every minute there is something really interesting to look at.  So beautiful.  The river boat cruise is free when you have a Eurail pass so this was a total score for us – a full day of really cool sight-seeing for no money at all.  This is one of those “must do” European “attractions” and we didn’t have to pay a thing to do it.

It is hard to describe what it is like seeing a gorgeous little German town, a giant church and/or a castle.  Castles everywhere.  It is crazy.  At times there are castles right next to each other.  There is one out in the river.   Some high on the hills, some down at town level.  And every little town looks so inviting.  Great wine, great plazas and squares, cute little restaurants.

We got a sandwich and some wine on the boat.  We sat out in the back where there were very few people so that we would have space and be as little disruptive as possible as the children were not ready to just sit quietly and stare out at the scenery.  There was only one party of women sitting in the back of the ship with us and they were talking riotously so we were not disturbing them in any way and from time to time Luciana would go over to them and say hello which they thought was very cute.  Other people would come and go but most found the rear-facing view to not be what they were looking for.  The forward decks were packed with tourists and while the view was better it left much to be desired because there was always someone standing in front of you getting their picture taken with whatever we were passing by at the time.

We are very happy that we decided to spend today cruising the Rhine.  A great vacation memory.  As we got towards the bottom of the route, though, we realized just how long this trip was taking and decided that we did not have time to go to Bingen at all and especially not to do any sight seeing on our return journey.  Originally we had thought that we would go all of the way to Bingen and then take the train back to Bacharach, where we had originally be slated to be staying for last night and tonight in the hostel in the castle there, and walk around town for an hour or two before heading back up to Boppard.  But once we saw how slowly the ship was moving, and once we realized how much time we lost by leaving at eleven instead of nine, we determined that we had to get off of the ship immediately and not do any sight seeing – very disappointing.

The next stop that we were able to take was Assmannshausen, just one stop before Bingen, so we hopped off when the ship stopped and took our chances with the local train.  We had no idea what to expect.

The walk through Assmannshausen from the docks to the train station was really magical.  What a gorgeous town.  The crowd getting off to see the town was decidedly small and elderly but they seem to have known something that the rest of us did not.  The town was tiny but made of amazing historic buildings and great looking restaurants with wonderful Rhine views.  We had no time to stop and see anything – just time to walk through town as quickly as we could as it was a really long way to the train station.

To make things more complicated, we were on the wrong side of the river from Boppard so we had to figure that out as well.  We caught the only train that we could with DB telling us that he best option was to ride it all of the way to Koblenz and then taking another train back up the Rhine to Boppard which would take an hour and a half!  That wasn’t a good idea.  So we did some quick research and decided that we could get off in Filsen, walk to the Boppard Ferry landing and just get back to Boppard that way.  A risky move but it seemed to be about half the total travel distance.

On the way to Filsen Liesl had a potty emergency which turned into a really serious emergency when we realized that the only toilette on our rail car was out of service.  Oh no!  When we got off in Filsen we knew that there would be no toilette there so we had to figure something out before then.  We decided to just have Liesl and I jump off at a random stop and make a mad dash for the forward train cars and hope for the best.  So that is what we did.

The mad dash plan actually worked.  We made it to the forward train cars (they are not connected internally) at one stop, used the working toilette there, and at St. Goar we made a mad dash back to the car that Dominica and Luciana and all of the luggage were in.  Dominica had alerted the conductor by the second leg of our dash so she stood outside of the train looking for us to make sure that we made it back.  Crisis averted.

The walk at Filsen wasn’t too bad although by the later portion of our boat ride the clouds had burned off and it was a hot, humid day rather than the expected thunder storms.  So we were pretty hot walking under the exposed sun from Filsen to the Boppard Ferry station.

Using the ferry was very easy and it dropped us off on the Boppard side at a spot that we knew well so we then just walked up, got ice cream from our favourite place and walked back to our hotel just in time for me to get to work.

I worked for a while and then for dinner this evening I walked around town a little bit, first stopping to chat with the hotel manager fora  bit, and then walking east along the “Wine Road” on which our hotel sat and then down towards the Markt to go to the Bopparder Imbiss restaurant which does Turkish pizza and other specialties and got fish sticks for Liesl and a cheese pizza for Dominica and I.  It took me a while but the food was excellent.  Once again showing that living in Boppard wouldn’t be a bad choice at all.

A bit after dinner Dominica was busy packing up the room and didn’t feel like taking a break so I went down alone to sit with the hotel manager and work from my laptop on the square, called the Balz (Balz being the local Bopparder dialect word for “place where chickens are traded”) and enjoy some local Boppard riesling.  Several people stopped by to visit with us while we were there.  It was a lovely evening.

After the wine was done, around eleven, it was up to the room and off to bed.  Tomorrow is going to be a very early day.  We really need to make the early train at just before nine thirty off to Mainz.  We have certainly learned our lesson about opting for a later train.  We need to be moving much earlier in the morning than we think to do what needs to be done.  It always takes much longer to get places and deal with all of our logistics than we think that it will.

Today was our final day in Germany, or at least Germany proper, for this trip.  We are very sad to be leaving.  We really love Boppard, what a great town.  So far this is Dominica’s favourite place in Europe and I have to agree.  I’ve now managed to spent an aggregate time of more than two weeks in Germany and it has been all extremely positive.  Tomorrow we are moving down and across the Rhine to the French Alsatian down of Neuf-Brisach which is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and one that looks extremely interesting.

We tried to adjust our plans for the next week to consolidate our hotel stays to make for some longer stays at single locations but that didn’t work out so we are stuck doing three sets of two night stays in a row.  That will be rough.  Later on in our vacation we have a lot of longer stays built in from the beginning.  We are heading into the most trying part of the journey now.

We finally have our first real post on Kidding Around Europe: Arriving in the UK.

Luciana got us up early this morning around six thirty.  Not what we needed.  We spent hours trying to get her to fall back asleep and did manage to but only for a tiny bit.  Liesl tried her best to sleep through it all and did, more or less.

At eight thirty we went downstairs to breakfast and got our day started.  Today is my “all homework” day with nothing planned, or allowed, except for doing coursework.

It was an exhausting day of work.   I worked solidly for hours.  In the middle of the afternoon we took a break so that we could go out for dinner.  We went to Chobocar on the Martk for dinner.  It was quite good.  We split flatbread pizza and a salmon quiche.  We are really struggling with the huge amount of bread eaten constantly here in Europe.  This is the opposite of our diet back home.  All carbs, no protein.  The food is all really good, though.  Liesl is doing great with trying and eating new foods that are outside of her norm.

After dinner we got some ice cream and walked around.  We are discovering that ice cream here is so much better than back home.  It is also in much more reasonable quantities which makes it make more sense that people eat it all of the time.

After our food and a stroll along the Rhine it was back to the hotel where I worked on homework all night.  I worked all evening and on until around one thirty in the morning.  At that point I submitted what I had.  I am hoping that I did what the professor is looking for.  I am way, way behind on the class and am really under the gun at this point.  I have a ton more work due this Friday – but at least this Friday night is when both my work for the office as well as my course work are all completely done and there is nothing past that point.  Saturday morning begins my real vacation which, after all of this, I am going to be pretty desperate to get to.

Tomorrow our plan is to get up and go out on a Rhine river cruise in the morning.