Jet lag can be a good thing! We were out or our room by 6 am local time, wandering the village and castle ruins long before any other tourists were on the trails. Fun morning walk, which resulted in lovely photographs (of course). The trails were steep, but nothing was far. A great morning stroll!

When we got back to the hotel, breakfast was set up but no other tourists were there. We felt smug until right at 8:00 (just a few minutes later) everyone came down from their rooms. We realized that we had missed some sign somewhere indicating what was the correct time to come for food. Oops. Now we are getting ready for our 10:00 boat ride, so I will post pictures we took this morning. Lovely little village!

The next 4 photographs were by Brian.

These next pictures are by me. I liked the cross bedding in the sandstones of the towers we visited. Also, a lot of white “milky” quartz is used as decorating stone. It makes me wonder if gold veins are nearby, like the ones in the Sierra Nevada. We have a geology book, of course. We’ll see if we get time to look that up!

Brian for scale on some of the stairs we climbed. Close up of the ruin that attracted us to go on this hike.

First night in Germany, and we stayed in in a cute town in the valley of the Rhine River. The sides of the Rhine River Valley here are steep, deep green and cultivated, in many places by vineyards that flow down the slopes. The old castle grounds are now in ruins, but towers, stairs and arches hint at its past beauty. See part of the old castle (partially renovated), an arch over a tributary to the Rhine, and an old ruined wall in the photos.

Brian hiked to this ruin, seen at a distance, when he was here alone in 2007. We hope to go up again tomorrow morning, if we have the energy before we hop on a boat on the Rhine to float downstream.

The town itself has narrow cobblestone streets lined with high buildings.

We are staying at the Rhein Hotel (spelled the German way) with a Rick Steve’s dinner special – traditional, locally grown, 5 courses and it took over 2 hours. Now we are more tired! As we enjoyed dinner, we watched people interacting with the river – almost the same ways as our California family members do: playing in the currents, frisbee, picnicking and riding bicycles along the edge of the water. That was interesting to observe!

We are at the back of this giant plane!

We are in the United Club waiting for our plane. Of course we got to the airport early. Now we get a light snack while we wait.