June 4, 2018 – Day Twenty – Koblenz to Kreuztal

June 4, 2018 – Day Twenty – Koblenz to Kreuztal

My day starts about 4:30!  Even though it was pretty warm in our well-appointed room, I still managed to get enough sleep to wake early!!  I go out on the balcony hoping for some pretty colors in the sky.  There is a bit of pink and the moon is still up.  I reason that if I can see the moon, the sun will probably come up a bit behind me and sunrise won’t be much more than what I’m seeing now.  When I come back later I realize that the sun actually comes up right behind the fortress and I probably missed the best shots of the trip.  Oh well, spilled milk and all that!  

Marilyn got about ten hours’ sleep, even if some of it was fitful due to the warmth.  Still, we’re able to go down to breakfast on time.  There’s the usual spread, but instead of two or three meats, there are about a dozen choices!  Most I can’t identify, but the one I chose seems to be pastrami!  And there’s brie!  And more of those unbelievably flavorful tomatoes!  Have I mentioned that each table, every where we’ve eaten, has a small canister on the table into which you drop your trash, like butter wrappers and used napkins?  Very clever!

Back upstairs Marilyn has gotten a message from Henning saying that my screen is being delivered today! We assume that means that the phone is repaired and is ready to come home!  Yay!  We say we’ll be home around seventeen hundred.  I’m very relieved.

Random thoughts while I’m waiting – When we were chatting with Evelin she told us that Germany has changed a great deal in the past five years due to the immigrants.  She won’t visit Berlin any more.  She used to feel comfortable walking around in the middle of the night, years ago.  She wouldn’t do it now.  Food for thought.

We’re off to explore Old Town and the Kurfurstliches Schloss, right on the Rhine and just south of us.  Their photo shows a large reflecting pool that looks intriguing.  

OOPS!  Change of plans!  As we’re heading for the schloss we see another cruise line.  There are nine piers all lined up along the river’s edge, and each is a different line.  We had given up on the castles tour because all the ads featured DK;  but these people have an hour and a half cruise that promises several castles!  The next one leaves in just fifteen minutes!  

There are only about a dozen people up on the outside deck, so we have our pick of tables.  The lady a table over is drinking a beer.  It’s 10:15.  Maybe it a radler, Steph!

The weather is perfect and the cruise was exactly what we were looking for!  Just enough time on the water;  just enough castles and pretty pictures!

The summer residence of William the First and his wife.

There are four half-timber houses, each representing one of the four wine-growing regions in Germany.

Beautiful river bank

Fun land!

These measure the distance from the beginning of the navigable portion of the Rhine to the end, 890 km.  The distance from Konstanz to Koblenz is 589 km.

The Koblenzer brewery, the biggest brewery on the Middle Rhine.

Our favorite castle on the cruise - Koblenz-Stolzenfelscastle,

Marksburg is the last castle before we turn around.  It's on the ease side of the river and it's morning.  Still, it's a beautiful castle!

These three towers are all that remains of a silver mine.  Marksburg was built to protect it.

This is the King's Seat.  The prince electors met here, at Rhens, to elect the new king.

There are eight bridges in Koblenz, three are over the Rhine and five over the Mosel.  This is an old railroad bridge.

Old meets new!

We see a couple of swans during the cuise.

In case you think there are no modern buildings!

Back to the start!

Another view of Wilhem First.

There is plenty of time left for shopping if we want to be home by seventeen hundred to meet Mustafah, so my screen can “come home”.  The altstadt is very close and we actually have a map and an idea of what we might be looking for!  It’s a little scary, because there don’t seem to be many people on the streets and we’re a bit afraid that the shops may be closed on Mondays.  Even some of the kiosks by the river seem closed!  However, it’s just a little early for most tourists and things pick up as we get deeper into the altstadt.  

In case you wondered where schmucks come from!

Hand-made chocolate shop

 

The trip is successful and the two shopkeepers with whom we interacted were extremely helpful!  Along the way back we stop at a “Gelateria” for frozen yogurt and at a bakery because we’re out of bread.  While there, I also pick up a little container of “mini nussecken” or nut triangles, which are a classic German treat, a dense confection coated with chocolate on the corners.  We’re back in the car by fourteen hundred!

Evelin’s Garmin is ready to take us home!  I’m pretty sold on this.  The display is much larger than my phone and she gives you so much information.  And she’s not wifi-dependent – just satellite-dependent.

We haven’t visited the third grocery store in the neighbor yet, so we stop at the REWE, looking for eggs, ice cream (we’ve eaten all of theirs), chips, tomatoes (can’t get enough of these tasty treats!) and popcorn.  We find everything but the popcorn.  It’s probably there, but, oh well.  We need to get home.

These windmills are gargantuan!!

Can you find the asparagus??

Marilyn and Henning message back and forth about my phone.  It turns out that the circuit board is broken.  Mustafah will be here after work, and I ask if I should pay him something for his trouble or if he will be insulted.  Henning doesn’t know and says we should just ask him.

When he arrives, Marilyn and I figure out that he is saying that he can see the bird (my wallpaper is a snowy egret) and the passcode screen;  but after that nothing happens.  He is pretty confident that my data is all there and that the card is undamaged.  Guess I’ll be getting a new phone on Saturday!  When he’s ready to leave I shake his hand with a twenty-euro note in mine.  At first he shakes his head no;  but Marilyn explains that it’s to cover his time and petrol, and he graciously accepts it, then.  Sigh.  I guess I shouldn’t complain.  This is still my very first smart phone and it was free!

Well, it’s time to think about what is going on with Marilyn’s computer.  This morning it refused to open iPhoto or anything else except Chrome. She’s spending lots of time researching the problem.  While she’s doing that I start dinner.  We’ve purchased what we hope will be chili ingredients and I assemble them all in a pot, in hopes of their flavors blending into something edible!  With some additional spices it’s pretty good, especially with grated cheese on top!

Marilyn is playing with her computer, so I finally sign up for Netflix so we can watch the next episodes of “Lie to Me”.  Eureka!!  She’s completely emptied her cache and her machine is happy!!  (Wish I could make my phone happy!).  She also learns a neat trick.  Sometimes when iPhoto is downloading files from the camera’s SD card, it will say some of them are in an unreadable format.  You can only see a black rectangle.  If you drag your cursor across each one, the magically appear and then you can import them!!  So weird!!  But if you’ve ever had it happen (and I have) it’s a great thing to know!!

We started a laundry earlier in the evening and it’s about time to put it in the dryer.  You should be able to open the front-loader by pushing the “fenster” button.  It won’t open.  Eventually we just opt to wash it again, with no soap, and see what happens.  This time it opens like a charm.  Arggg

Anyway, it’s time for bed.  It’s so wonderfully cool here;  it will be a delightful change from last night.  Even though the hotel was right on the river, we couldn’t get it cool enough for our tastes.