Monday, March 23, 2009

Rhine Valley and St. Goar

After Amsterdam we headed down into Germany and began our drive towards the little, quiet town of St. Goar. We spent more time on the bus playing get to know you games while also trying to catch up on some of the sleep that we lost the night before from the craziness of Amsterdam. Even though you may be really tempted to sleep the entire way from Amsterdam to St. Goar try to stay up because the views are absolutely breathtaking and you do not want to miss them. Basically St. Goar is just a pit stop on the European Discovery Trip. We arrived around dinner time again and checked into our hotel (which was a super cute little hotel) and headed down to dinner. We had a great several course dinner. After dinner several of us headed to our optional excursion for the evening which was a wine tasting. We were taken to a wine cellar around the corner from our hotel and got to sample six different wines from the region. I really enjoyed the wine tasting because I am indeed a lover of wine especially white wine and the region that we were in only created white wine. We also got to sample a very special wine called ice wine that can only be created when grapes have been below freezing for a specific amount of time. Being a wine lover I did indeed have to purchase several bottles to take home with me. After the wine tasting we headed back to our hotel where most people headed up to bed. Others got online as there was an internet cafe in the hotel (and thus began the facebook friendships) and a few of us stayed up and had a couple drinks. We were all in bed before midnight though and the bartender told us that we were the lamest Contiki group he has ever had come through the town.

Early the next morning we got up and before we headed to Munich we were able to shop at the little stores surrounding our hotel. First, we went to a beerstein center where we were surrounded by all kinds of beer steins and learned the history of beer steins in Germany and how they are made. It was really interesting to see all the different kinds of steins and if you want, you can treat yourself to one. Other shops that were available to visit were a cuckoo clock shop and a birkenstein shop.

Again, St. Goar is a very nice quiet town, but for our trip it was merely a rest area. Take my advice...get sleep when you are in St. Goar, its the last time you will really be able to sleep until Switzerland.

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