St Goar, Rhine Valley, Germany

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Saturday 18th July 2009

Another morning and another 6am wake up, this morning I get up and get dressed into a skirt and top without realising that the thunder, lightening and rain last night has indeed cooled the temperature substantially and after breakfast I change immediately into jeans and a shirt which I had fortunately packed into my backpack... PHEW!!!!

We head off from Prague at 8am and today we are off to the Rhine Valley in Germany. When we arrive in St Goar we go straight to the Stein Shop where they tell us how steins are made and what type of limited editions they have available. After this we have a few minutes to look around and buy anything - I get a pewter shotglass with pictures depicting the local area. Then we are off to the cuckoo clock place but I miss any talk there if there was one and debate buying a ring or t-shirt and get neither of them.

After a quick spell of checking out the shops we troop back to the bus and head to the hostel which is a castle on a hill, to get there the bus has to go through some VERY narrow streets including a stone gateway barely wide enough to fit the bus.... once we get there we can immediately see why we are not taking our main luggage - it would actually be dangerous I reckon trying to walk down the rocky path to the castle. Once inside we are up a few floors to our four berth room. A few people are flipping out about the shower situation tonight, there is a female bathroom on our floor with two showers, the contentious issue is the see through doors, it is a bit frosted and not completely clear and if the bathroom door is open and you stand at the doorway you could see that someone in the shower...

We go down to dinner which is three course but very basic, it's herb soup for starters followed by a beef ghoulash with rice or pasta or chicken tofu with rice or pasta. Dessert is chocolate mousse which is like chocolate yoplait with whipped cream. Not feeling to good again tonight so skip the wine session tonight - the wine was bought with the fine's money we have been collecting Jamie was one of the biggest contributers!! 😊

I have a shower and make sure the bathroom door is closed. 😊 lol....

Sunday 18th July

Awake at 6am again but doze until the bells started bonging away at 7am.. and am reminded of my uncle's travel diary which I typed up back when I was back at school in which he talks about the :"bloody bells!!" going off in the morning...

Anyway we have breakfast and on the road by 8.35am and today we have a different driver, we have Andy instead of Damo, apparently Damo needs to have a 45 hour break. Today is another rainy day and a bit on the cool side, we stop in the Netherlands for lunch for 45 minutes and then go to the Cheese and Clogs factory for a demonstration and talk on cheesemaking and clog making - the guy is hilarious and flirts outrageously with all the girls! After this we go around the road for another stop where we can take photos of a windmill turned house and then we are off to our hostel in Amsterdam and this time we are walking distance of the city centre for a change.

When the bus stops it is a flying stop and we are also to take everything off the bus, originally we thought the bus might be going to get fixed but it isn't but I know I need to completely reorganise everything for the trip back to London where I will be catching a train. So I take everything but the sleeping bag and then realise after weighing myself down that we have a walk to our hostel... darnit!! lol.....

On arrival again we find that the rooms that we were allocated are not the ones we get (ie: expecting a certain number of 4, 6, 8 and 10 berth rooms and then getting given completely different configurations after working out our rooming lists). We have 4 in our group once again but find ourselves in a six berth room.... lol.... yay some extra room... funnily enough Adela seems to be much more organised these days and not spreading her stuff out everywhere!! 😊

I am hot tired and grumpy!!! tonight we find our own dinner and meet outside the hostel at 7.30pm for our walk into town to the red light district and the sex show. I have dinner at the hostel cause it's easy and it's steak 😊 yeah!!! Then get ready and head down for the walk. Some of the tour group has been out already sampling the "coffee shops" of Amsterdam. We walk to the red light district and oh my god you should see the bakeries!! The food they have!! The waffles!!! About 30 of us go to the sex show which a bit disappointing, the first few acts are okay - people are looking away and not sure where to look etc - its hilarious!! There are candles, ribbons and bananas..... Nadia and Nick are called up on stage for the banana act, Nadia I think had arrived back at her seat just as they were selecting people so didn't know what she was called up on stage for... but full credit for her for taking a bite!!! Charlie got up for the girl with the pen.... Alas the couple at the end well.... it was all a bit clinical really and he was nothing to look at.... considering it's a non stop show, the next one was to start 10 minutes after our show I guess it all gets a bit ho hum in the end....

Once the show was over we head into the red light area and walk through skinny lane where the girls are on display with services for sale... we head to a bar for a few drinks and half our group leave to get some munchies as they are coming down, then some of our group leave to get something... After we leave this bar and on our way to the next I head off home once we are out of the red light area and onto the main drag home....

Tomorrow a free day in Amsterdam....

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