Europe Bus Tour-2010 - Belgium

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Eindhoven to Cologne and Heidelberg

Breakfast in KONINGSHOF is also worth mentioning. They have good variety with local items such as Danish cookies etc. There is a very good coffee machine with various types coffee drink dispensed. They also serve buttermilk similar to milk here. We all tried croissants here.
After the luggage was loaded we headed towards Cologne. 8:48 am

Cologne is not too far from the Netherlands border. As soon as we entered Germany, the signs are no more in English. It is only in German. The roads are smoother, but lot of them were under construction as well. Lots of fields, such as corn, wheat etc. on the way. First stop was the 515 feet tall gothic cathedral. It took 6 centuries to complete the cathedral. (11-17). It is a beautiful big blackstone building. All were welcome to visit. It also hosts one of the biggest organ pipes in the world. We spent an hour in there. There were lot of old depictions of Christian life in walls and glass panels. We shopped for souvenirs after that. We also tried pretzels here. Lunch was arranged at a near-by Indian restaurant called Jaipur. It was a very warm day. We were sweating. Hot and spicy food made it worse. After lunch, we walked back to the bus.

We traveled along the Rhine river. Next stop was a Rhine river cruise from Boppard. The cruise will cover about 13 kms of Rhine river, to St. Goar. Whole area is spectacular. There are mountains on both sides of the river. On the slopes, you would see vineyards and old castles. On either side of the highway, there are roads and train tracks. The train track was quite busy. In Boppard, before boarding the cruise, we could avoid noticing the fact that a bottle of beer and bottle of water costs the same (around 1.80 euros). The bus came by the road to St. Goar and picked us up around 5:15 PM

We traveled towards Heidelberg. There was an accident that slowed us down by 20 minutes. By the time we reached the town, it was 7:45 PM. We had one hour to enjoy the old town. It is situated between 2 rivers, one of them being Rhine. Both sides there are mountains. Streets The town square is a spectacular area with a statue of Hercules. Rain clouds were threatening from the time we landed. Ten minutes in the square and it started pouring. There was quite a bit of lightning and thunderstorm. Shops were closed. We took shelter in one Italian bistro. When there was some letdown in rain, with the help of umbrella we had carried, we headed back to the bus. The place looked even more beautiful in the rain. The hotel, Park Place Inn was 20 minute ride from there. We reached the hotel around 9:30. We had dinner around 10 PM.

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