April 4, Thursday

We said a fond goodbye to Trier this morning after one last continental breakfast at Hotel Pieper. I tried some of the local marmalade on the German nut bread. Very tasty. I wish we could get bread like that at home.

We took the 10:15 train to Koblenz and changed trains to St Goar, about a 2 hour trip. The trains were more crowded today than earlier in the week, no idea why, but we still had plenty of room to stretch out and watch the German countryside roll by. The train tracks run alongside the river Mosel and every five minutes or so we come upon a German town of anywhere between 100 and 10,000 residents, I'd guess. Every town, regardless of size, has a medieval-looking church with high steeple, a rail station, and a port for the numerous barges that sail up and down the Mosel. I wonder if truck traffic to the towns is greatly reduced on German roads because of the rail and barges.

The town of St Goar lies about 30 minutes from Koblenz by train. After disembarking we searched the narrow streets for our hotel, Zum Goldenen Loewe (The Golden Lion.) Two charming old German ladies greeted us at the lobby in English, then took us to our rooms. Both of our hotel rooms in Trier and St Goar were in Baroque era buildings but the bathrooms had been renovated with modern fixtures. That is much appreciated. After settling in we went in search of lunch.

We settled on an international looking restaurant that featured pictures of all the main dishes. Smart marketing for illiterate travelers like us. Dad had the schnitzel, paul spaghetti shrimp scampi. Chris risked immediate deportation by ordering chicken NUGGETS! We pretended not to know him.

After lunch we decided to tackle the nearby castle, Reinfels.  We had some difficulty (no surprise to the alert reader) in finding the bus to the castle but we eventually found the right bus stop. The castle was immense with two major sections. The best part of the castle visit was our ability to roam the ruins at our leisure. There were dark tunnels that required our flashlights, a dungeon, a tower and lots of battlements. The tower granted a superb view of the whole area and we took lots of pictures. It was great fun exploring the castle and we even managed to pillory Chris on the way out.

After making our way back to town we decided to stop at Cafe St. Goar for coffee and jelly donuts. They also have one of the few Wi-Fi connections in town so I will upload now and complete this evening in tomorrow's blog.