20 Weeks RTW: May 2017

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Tuesday, May 30 (week 19 / day 128) Basstogne, Belgium

Auf Wiedersehen to Germany

Goodbye to Weisel & to Germany for the last time. We liked Germany for the good food, prompt service, cheap gas, beautiful landscapes with cool castles, palaces & medieval towns. We packed up at our place in Weisel & our host's daughter gave us a nice note on a postcard as we pulled out of the driveway. Katharin spoke fairly good English & interacted with us more than her parents who were very nice but didn't speak much English at all. We would recommend this place for other visitors. We made our way up the Rhine River & got a shot at a few more castles...

the master bedroom in Weisel: "take time to dream, it's the way to the stars"

castle ruins on the west bank in St. Goar

another castle on a hill

fortress in Koblenz

Luxembourg Fries for Lunch

Our objective today was to have lunch in Luxembourg (country #18) & cross into Belgium (country # 19) & get to the Bastogne War Memorial by 4pm when they stop letting people in. French fries seem to be the thing here but were only mediocre; burgers & schnitzel ok & of course the sodas hard to ruin. We wanted to hear some Luxembourgish spoken but it seems that French is the language spoken in the north here in the small town of Wincrange.

we made it to Luxembourg!

lunch stop for fries

burgers, fries, schnitzel & soda to help it go down

Bastogne War Memorial

In Belgium, we made it into the Bastogne Memorial parking lot (free!) at 3:22 & into the museum by 3:30. We ended up not leaving the memorial site until 6:15.

Kyra using ancient texting device to send an "SOS"

Monday, May 29 (week 19 / day 127) St. Goar, Germany

Rafting on the Rhine

Instead of touring the dozens of castles along the Rhine, we decided to just see the castles from the river while rafting. Our guide, Sven, grew up in the small town of Kaub where we launched from. He kept telling us how dangerous the river is although I'm not sure the rapids pass 1.5 since there are only a few ripples in the water. We had a relaxing day (except when Sven told us to paddle) in the 90 degree sunny weather. It really did feel like Memorial Day!

After we left the beach area we realized that Cannon had left his Teva sandals there since he had put on the water shoes. Sven said, "oh, that's difficult." Stacia waited with the kids for an hour in St. Goar while Sven drove me back to our van & I made the trek for the sandals. I had to ferry the van over ($10 round trip), drive upstream, park on the roadside, find the hidden beach & climb down. Luckily they were still there! I thought about just swimming across but it's probably illegal & could have caused a bunch of problems.