A Weekend on the Water

Oh man, this weekend was nutso-crazy-busy. We are having an old college friend to stay with us this week (her vacation) with us in Stuttgart, and I'm trying to cram a lot of different activities into our itinerary while she's here. We picked her up from the airport on Saturday morning, and since we were already fairly far north in Frankfurt, we decided to go to the Rhine Valley for the day. We parked the car in Bingen am Rhine, and took a boat trip up to St. Goar. It was inexpressively lovely.



Originally, I was a little skeptical that the boat cruises up and down the river would be worth it, but it was easily the best way to see all the sights if you don't have time to drive slowly up the river (which you could easily do for about 3 straight days!).



Every time the boat went around a corner, another charming town or imposing castle would come into view. I want to revisit this one, Bacharach:



After disembarking in St. Goar, we walked around the town for a little bit, got some ice cream, and headed back to Bingen via the train, a very pleasant 25-minute trip back along the river. Then we drove back to Stuttgart, and managed to not immediately crash before having some dinner. The only regret I have is not being able to spend more time in the valley, because it was stupid hot this weekend and being near the river helped tremendously. I would also like to try and go back for some wine tasting, but we'll see how things go.

On Sunday we took the train into Tübingen, a little college town south of Stuttgart. The air conditioning on our train was broken, so we were a little sticky by the time we got into town. It reminded me strongly of Berkeley, with its earnest college students striding purposefully down the streets, aging hippies drinking and hanging out in the parks, and imposing buildings (of both the old and really old varieties) sprinkled throughout the town.



We walked up and down the river and rented a canoe. I tried to micromanage the canoe steering, which was a problem because I was sitting in the middle of the canoe. Eventually I was delegated to camera duty.



90% of my photos of Tübingen are either of the Neckar river or views from our canoe while we were on the river. We had a leisurely train ride back into Stuttgart (air conditioning was working, thank goodness). I got to put in a lot of good solid knitting time on the sleeves for my leaf lace kimono. The sleeves really do go much faster than the body pieces, so now I'm more hopeful that I will actually complete this before Italy & France. Next time, more adventures around Stuttgart!