01 JUL - Travelling by Tornado (Day 24)

Rocco was a real trooper. He drove for 4 hours before I grabbed the reins. OK, OK, we weren't exactly driving a team of 10 but I did grab the steering wheel. I stayed awake the whole time too in order to keep Rocco from sleeping and drooling on himself. He has a tendency to do that. He says he always dreams about drowning.

We got to the airport around 05:30 so we had plenty of time before the girls arrived. Their flight was a bit delayed and I think that we were on the road again at 08:00. We went to the InterCity hotel in downtown Frankfurt. The rooms were supposed to have air conditioning (since it was going to be around 30 deg C).

It turns out that the air conditioning didn't work but the hotel did have beds. I slept until 13:30. We had said we would meet in the lobby at 13:00 but I didn't feel like setting my alarm.

Rocco had noticed that there was a boat tour of part of the Rhein river so we decided to join it. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the train station (right across the street from the hotel) and were on our way.

The tour would take us by bus up the river, the boat would bring us down the river and then we would have a dinner supplied at a nice restaurant. In my opinion, we payed $75 for a 1.5 hour boat trip down the Rhein. The tour bus guide had a whole palate of topics on which to discuss but she didn't have anything of note but a few comments about wine to share with us. She even admitted that she didn't know that much about wine. The dinner was OK but the "wine tasting" was really a sales pitch to sell wine.

As promised, here are some photos of our little tour.

It's pretty apparent that I was still tired in this photo. It was a beautiful day though. The sun was shining (yes, I used sun cream), the wind was blowing and we were in the middle of a wonderful river valley surrounded by wine fields and old castles.


"What the world needs now ...." I'm glad that Rocco got a shot of the name of this town. I always get a chuckle from things like this.


I know I promised to have more content in the photos than just scenery. Unfortunately, a lot of the photos that I took are stuck on Zaccheus camera. She didn't bring the cable to connect it to a computer. She usually just prints the photos she wants right from the memory stick. This is a really good shot of the river though. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful setting.


This shot shows exactly why were on the river today. An old church in a small riverside town with tall hills and vineyards in the background ... is this what you expect when you think of Germany?


There are a lot of castles along this part of the Rhein. This is standard scenery on these boat tours.


How would you like to be a kid growing up in a little town with this castle in the background? I don't think that I ever would have tired of playing knights and knaves.


Here is a nice picture of Rocco and Tah-Dah. I say it's a nice photo because Rocco is smiling normally. He would always make faces at the camera when we were growing up. I think he was behaving because Tah-Dah was in town.


"I think I need you to do a little strip mining right about ... here." I was surprised to see this in Germany. They are very environmentally conscious. There was probably a good justification or legal case but it was still interesting to see.


According to the photos that Rocco takes, all of Germany is on a hill including the rivers. Well, rivers ARE on hills in a technical sense ... awe, never mind. I found it ironic that this boat was carrying a boat too.


At first glance, I thought that we had found the secret enclave of German hillbillies. It turns out that this was just a camp ground. We have seen a few but not many German hillbillies.


Here is the boat we were on for our trip. Yes, we were supposed to deboard at this time.


Rocco is a very light drinker. The tour included dinner and some wine tasting. The wine tasting were four, no five, thimbles of wine. I'm surprised that Rocco drank them. He mentioned that he was little tipsy afterwards though. It takes a lot more to make me so as you can see according to this photo. This was a little collection of pudgy monks holding beer mugs. I thought that I fit right in. I am holding two glasses of ice wine. The grapes for the wine are picked when they are frozen hence ice wine. It is pretty expensive too. It's a very sweet white wine though. I'm not a big fan.


The bar for the wine tasting also had these really cool booths made from huge old wine casks. I think it would have been fun if my barbershop quartet were to sing inside one of those. Talk about ringing chords!


After dinner and the wine tasting, we hopped on the bus and they took us back downtown in Frankfurt. We missed the England v Portugal match but we made it just in time to see the France v Brazil game. France definitely brought their game that day. Their passing was awesome and their defense just shutdown Brazil. It was fun watching their different playing styles clash. Alles lez Bleux!

Tomorrow, we are off to Rothenburg. What'd ya think of the pics?


Knuckles