Amsterdam to Rhine Valley

Day 3 starts off with us leaving Amsterdam around 9:30. We play another game on the bus where we have to stand up and introduce ourselves, tell what we are looking forward to on the trip, who we would MFK and tell two truths and one lie where everyone had to guess the lie. That killed a lot of time and we had some laughs and got to know each other even more. I think by day seven we will be taking blood oaths or something.

We eventually got to Saint Goar in the Rhine Valley for a river cruise which would take us past some of the grape growing areas as well as a ton of castles. The wine from this area is apparently expensive because as you can see their fields are on steep mountain faces and they must do all the harvesting by hand.

Here are some of the castles that I snapped with my super zoom (see below). I think there are stories behind most of them but there weren’t any speakers up at the bow so I didn’t hear them. I’m sure something tragic and castley happened at each one of them. Probably involving a princess and her peasant lover being betrayed by Gilbert Gottfried. You know how castles are.

mini zoom:

SUPER ZOOM:

After checking out all the castles and whatnot, we went into town to check out some cuckoo clocks and beer steins. Yep.

The cuckoo clock shop is the largest “free-hanging cuckoo clock” shop in the world. It also has the largest functioning cuckoo clock in the world displayed at it’s entrance. Two actual humans come out when it strikes the hour. Just kidding but it’s seriously huge.

Inside we got a quick history lesson about cuckoo clocks and their origins. They are all hand carved and hand-painted so you can imagine how expensive they are. Also, they are pretty high maintenance. The larger more expensive clocks have to be wound once a week and the smaller, cheaper clocks need to be wound every single day. No thanks!

After I bought a hooded sweatshirt at the cuckoo clock shop (ha!) we went over to the beer stein shop. As I write this I’m looking for the pics of the inside of the shop and apparently they didn’t take. Or I didn’t take them. Either way it was really impressive inside - they had over 3,000 kinds of steins. So I bought a magnet.

Then we had 30 minutes of free time, or as I call it, ice cream time. After the ice cream a bunch of people were sitting on a wall and it looked like a good spot for a pic so we got more people on the wall and then took a pic. This is the result. I’m in the front because I had to run over after setting the timer. Also, I’m important.

We went back to the hotel after this and had some dinner. There was an optional wine-tasting tour which I skipped and now I’m in my room writing this post and getting ready to catch up on some much-needed sleep. They’re really keeping us busy. Tonight I have a room to myself because there are only three guys on this trip that came alone which means we are always going to be rooming with each other and one of us will have his own room each night. It’s pretty sweet actually. 

Day 3 down!