When we left off, we were boarding the bus in Amsterdam, H&M bags in hand. Next stop: Germany!!!!! We were both so excited to see Germany, specifically Munich (Munchen), after a brief pit stop in St. Goar (pronounced Saint Gware). St. Goar was essentially a rest stop between Amsterdam and Munich, but was a cool little town right on the Rhine River. Our drive to St. Goar took us on the Autobahn, where we learned that if you have a German-registered car, you can still drive as fast as you want. However, new EU regulations mean that non-German vehicles are subject to a speed limit. Since our bus was Hungarian or something, we had to obey the traffic laws. No speeding for us.
The weather was kind of dreary, so most of us took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep while we traveled on the smooth highway. Once we got closer though, we started to see castles! It was the neatest thing, driving down the Rhine valley seeing castle after castle up on the mountains, along the river.
Also along the river, up the sides of the mountains were miles and miles of vineyards. We took photos out of the bus windows, which don't do the slopes justice.
The town of St. Goar is pretty small. One main street, a hotel, some bars and a few shops. Its definitely a tourist town and I'm sure that its a whole different place in the spring, summer and fall. We were there on a pretty dreary, rainy day, so there weren't many people out and about. Our bus was the only one in town and we seemed to fill up the hotel. We arrived at Hotel Montag, a small family-owned hotel on the banks of the Rhine River and had a few minutes to freshen up before dinner and wine tasting. Our room was pretty tiny, it reminded us of a dorm room. Unlike the hotel in Amsterdam, it had a shower curtain. This made us both happy, almost as happy as the clean clothes that we were going to get to wear the next morning. Dinner was surprisingly good - spaaten noodles, soup, meat and salad and of course, a mug of beer. We ate and then headed to a wine tasting in a 17th century wine cellar.
On our way to the wine tasting, we happened to be walking with Johnny, our bus driver. He motioned us down an alley and to a gate, where he said, "Stick your camera in there, make sure the flash is on, and take a picture." Of course, I couldn't resist, so I did. Here's the picture. It still makes me laugh.
The wine cellar was very neat. Definitely old. We headed down the stairs and walked into a room with lots of empty bottles and huge barrels. You could tell that Contiki helps to keep this place in business. All of the barrels were filled with signatures of past Contiki tours. I took the opportunity to capture our lack of luggage situation, "screw the luggage, we have wine!"
When the wine tasting was over, we all headed back to the hotel. Some of us stayed up and drank some more beer before bed. The bar was small, but great for chatting, so we ended up staying up a little later than we had intended. We were grateful that we had saved a sandwich from one of our rest stops en route. I'm pretty sure that it saved us both from a hangover the next day.
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