Click the links for photos, this will open a new page. On the lower right of the new page, click the map link to see where the photo was taken. I will figure out a better way to do this when I have more time. I will also add some photos to this later. Here is the map and story for now.
On my first day in Germany I landed in Frankfurt at 6am local time. Very shortly after checking into the hostel near the Frankfurt train station I made friends with a guy, Steve, from Perth Australia. Together we set off to catch the Rhine river boat. The KD (Köln-Düsseldorfer) river boat travels between Mains and Köln Germany. The main stretch between Bingen and Koblenz is very scenic with many Burgs (Castles/Fortresses) along its route.
We first tried to catch the boat in Mainz. We ended up getting off the train a stop or two too late and trying to get to the Rhine through what ended up being an industrial area. After walking a while we waited for a local bus to take us to the docks on the other side of the Rhine in Mainz. After finding the K-D booth in Mainz we were informed that the boat left there at 8am for the only time that day and could hopefully take a train to Bingen to catch the boat for its last trip up the river for the day. We grabbed a quick snack and a drink and tried to find the train station hidden behind a construction site near a cinema in some back streets. This part of the mission is plotted on the map in green. Zoom in the detailed path of slightly lost travelers.
We arrived in Bingen and took a Mercedes cab to the K-D dock after asking some locals for directions. The cab got us there just in time to see the boat pull up for it’s very short docking. I got a beer and went up on the deck for a better view.
The boat wend up the Rhine past the many castles and little towns. I used my Rick Steves book on Germany to get some background of what we were sailing past. There seems to be one hostel in Bacharach located in a castle. There was a group of people sitting at one of the tables inside the boat singing German songs and many people in the boat were singing along; at least to the chorus. I had the opportunity to listen to the music for a while as the cold rain fell during the last half of the trip.
We got off the boat at the last stop in Koblenz and ate dinner. I ordered the sauerbraten with red cabbage and potato pancakes and a large beer. The meat was nice and thick and extremely tasty.
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Hey Daniel, this is your dad’s friend, Scott. I think it’s pretty cool that you’re checking out Europe. I’ve bookmarked your blog and will check back now and again.
What has been your favorite memory so far? I hear with the dollar so far down and the inflation in Europe that things are pretty expensive there. Have you found that to be the case? Take a lot of pictures of the food you eat. My friend gave me that advice in China and I’m glad he did. It’s funny how the pictures of the food stimulate your memories and let other people enjoy the trip. Those potato pancakes look great!
I hope you really enjoy the rest of your trip.
BTW, it looks like you might have put the link to your gps_tracks page when you were on the visual tab in WordPress. If you edit the post, cut the link and past it using the code tab, that should do the trick.
Hey Scott! Good to hear from you. I will have to try to actually keep up with the site now that people seem to actually be following it. My favorite memory is hard to answer right now… the trip has been an adventure for sure and I have a back log of topics to update on here for sure. The dollar is weak here and stuff gets expensive. For comparison, A cup of Starbucks coffee is the same price here, but different currency. So its like paying 50% more for the cup. McDonalds and such are actually priced higher plus the currency change.
Taking pictures of the food I eat is something I learned a while back from traveling with my girlfriend. At the end of each trip we had some pictures of the different food we tried. At the end of the trip I was really glad to have them. In fact I now intend to write a post dedicated to some of the food I have eaten.
I have no idea what happened to that map. Its embedded in the posting as an IFrame and was working before. I just repasted to code again and it fixed it. I thought maybe my Google API key got messed up. BTW, the handheld GPS is very useful when traveling abroad and the tracks are fun to look back on. Plus you can geotag your photos. Lately I have not been keeping up with my GPS tracks and have probably gotten some overwritten. I’ll get back on track with that… no pun intended.