Better than Disneyland...no electricity required

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July 6, 2007

More fun than Disneyland…no electricity required.


I earned my hot apple strudel with ice cream today. I never stopped moving the whole day! We woke up and right after breakfast rented bikes. Our goal was to ride up the Rhine to St. Goar (2 towns away) and explore the local castle called the Rheinfels Castle from the 11th century. Before I tell of this fun day we are now in Germany!

Yesterday we left the Netherlands for Germany. We were going on car trips of “no more than 2 hours” said Scott. So far all trips have been 4 ½ hours from one destination to another no matter what…this trip included.

When we arrived however I was awe struck at the beauty. We are in the Rhine River valley. It is gorgeous. The views, the castles on the hill sides, the river with the huge barges traveling in both directions, the vineyards growing on the hillside….Words could not describe the beauty….plus the sun was out! We stayed in a charming small town called Bacharach. This is the quintessential German town. The houses look like gingerbread houses ….the beer is good, the food is heavy, and everyone was so nice.

Our first afternoon was spent walking around and exploring Bacharach, which has its own castle, turned youth hostel or hostile as the case may be. We hiked up this cliff to view the beautiful castle from the 12th century to find a group of 12-14 year olds girls huddled together near the entrance. We paid little attention to them other than the usual whines about this and that from kids that age. We continued on our hike and the girls came running in and seemed a little worked up. We sat to rest and witnessed a huge fight that brought what must have been the whole class and 4 teachers (one yelling at the top of his lungs) to the courtyard…. over of course a BOY! Justin was fascinated by the girl drama, and they were British kids so we knew the whole story! Can’t wait for that part of my future! I felt like telling them that behavior like that in the 12th century would mean the gallows!

So…on to our big adventure today. After we rented our bikes we took a glorious bike ride along the Rhine to St. Goar. We biked 8 miles to town, parked our bikes and proceeded to hike 3 miles up a huge hill to the castle entrance. This castle was built in the 11th century and while crumbling is huge. It was so cool…it had caves, secret tunnesl, mine shafts. The boys explored each and every cave, mine shaft, and dark tunnel with a single candle sold at the gift shop. We spent more than two hours…going up stairs, down stairs, through a tunnel, up more stairs, down a darker tunnel, up to the tower, down the tower to the slaughter house room, down mine, through the dungeon. Will said it was “Better than Disneyland.” I agreed and there was no electricity, animation, video games, computer graphics, hardware, software or sitting down. It was just their imaginations, an old castle and a candle.

We finally talked them into a lunch break…thank goodness...followed by a 3rd hour in the castle, going up, down and through the tunnels. Now the hard part…we’re all tired, Scott is starting to not feel well and we have 3 miles down the hill and 8 miles back on the bikes…into the wind! I never thought we would make it! It took 25 minutes to ST. Goar and 90 minutes home.

Poor Scott however ended up with Will’s stomach flu. It was the 24 hour variety but after the exhausting castle he ended up in bed instead of enjoying his hot strudel with homemade vanilla ice cream!

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