Friday, Day 11 After Jackie read this blog she said that she was surprised that I omitted one of the best things we have seen on the trip up to now. I completlely left out comments on Burg Eltz, the beautiful castle just above Cochem. So, I am issuing an edit on this day. After breakfast we headed for Burg Eltz, the castle that R. Steves claims is his favorite in all of Europe. This castle has been in tact for 700 years. It is not on the Mosel River but in a thick forest a few miles north. In my mind it is the ultimate, and maybe the first, condomium. It seems that the three families lived together inside and had separate lives. There was a meeting room where they met to work out issues ... read more

Wednesday-another great weather day Originally we had planned to spend two nights here but we discovered two reasons to reconsider. First, there was no air conditioning and second, our second floor window opened just above the square with folks walking, drinking, and even singing the night away. In Vienna, we prayed for hot weather and now got our prayers answered. It was about 90 degrees in our room that night. So, our plan today was to experience the famous Roman-Irish Bath (Friedrichsbad) here early and then to drive north towards the Rhine River Valley. The facility was built during the Roman Empire days. It uses the natural hot springs in the area for all the heating and hot baths. We had read all about this in the R. Steves guide book but were still a little ... read more

Sunday and Monday, Beautiful weather and great location makes for a happy couple. This blog covers two very fun days. After lots of rain in Vienna and Hallstatt, we got lucky. We drove from Hallstatt to Reutte in about three hours. The drive itself was wonderful. The scenary is out of a storybook or movie. We arrived about 1pm to our nice hotel in the center of this little town. As an aside, we discovered that our great rocket scientist, Werner von Braun, joined America at the end of WWII in this town. We loved the hotel and its owner, Hans. After a short rest we went out to see what we could do on our first afternoon here. The owner recommended that we ride a local cable car to the top of a nearby mountain ... read more

Rain, rain go away! We had another busy and interesting day. We decided to follow a Rick Steves recommended city tour. We had our book and audio tapes with us and found them valuable to see so much in so little time. It would be easy to spend a week here visiting the museums and historical sites, not to mention all of the dining venues. The weather was overcast but not raining as we left the hotel. We started our walking tour at the Vienna Opera house. It is famous due to the various notable opera and ballet performers that have entertained there. English tour was about to start at 10am so we purchased tickets and waited inside the lobby for it. We met there another America couple with their teenage son there. They were from ... read more

Today was Jackie's day. She was excited about finally getting to see her new car. We got up early and packed for the subway ride to the BMW Welt for the delivery. We always feel like we are in the TV program "Amazing Race" when we do these things. We feel success when we choose to take an alternative to "easy way" and find out our plan works. In this case, instead of taking a taxi we took the subway. And it worked. After checking in at the Welt and getting briefed on the various options, we got to see the car. Jackie was so happy that the colors she chose looked as good in person as they did in the book. We skipped the factory tour and drove out about noon. We programmed Heidi to ... read more