Goodbye from the Rhine

Hello family. Tomorrow we are leaving the Rhine valley in Germany and will make our way to Dubrovnik, Croatia. We have to catch a 735 am train and make a few changes in some towns before reaching the airport in cologne. We arrived in st goar, Rhine valley, Germany two days ago. We got in on a late train so we didn't get to our hotel until 930pm and didn't get to go eat until after 10. Unfortunately this town, and apparently this entire area, does not cater to anyone pass 9pm!! The Rhine valley seems to be a place where old, white German tourists come and visit and they only arrive in the towns after 10am and all start to leave around 3pm so by 5-530 you already see ppl sit down and eat dinner. Then the towns shut down by like ...8pm. So the night we arrived from Paris we were searching along the one main street hoping to find anything opened. We were the only ppl on the street and it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Eventually we found this place called Asia Kim and they do Vietnam, Chinese, phillipeno style food. How horrible. I refused to eat there b/c I wasn't even that hungry and would rather just wait for morning breakfast than to eat that. Farhan bought a takeout of chicken and rice in case we couldn't find anything else. When we walked back to our hotel we realized a hotel restaurant still had customers so i asked the waitress if they still served food. After waiting what we seemed like forever she came back out and said yes!! Yay!! So I had pork schnitzel w/ onions on top and potatoes. Farhan had spaghetti bolognese. When I say the main street is empty I mean it seriously there was nobody there, no sounds coming out of anywhere. The street is the length of like... 2 lynnwood drives. That is basically the size of the town we sleep at. The other towns are a little larger, but not by much. I think only tourists sleep there and workers sleep somewhere else... Our first full day we had hotel breakfast which was cold meats, cheeses, bread, eggs, fruit etc. European style continental breakfast. Then we took the train to the other to river called the Mosel river and the area is called the Mosel valley. That's where all the german Riesling wines are produced. When you had wine here ppl ask you dry, semi sweet or sweet and whatever you choose they bring so you don't even have to look at the menu and the wines are from the local region. So whatever town you are in the wine you are drinking is from that local town. Oh ya also the side of the valleys are COVERED in vineyards. Maybe 75-80% are vineyards. It's incredible also so pretty. So we got to this town in the mosel valley called cochem, rented bikes and off and away we went. It's a good thing I had written down the name of bicycle and bicycle rental in German b/c we had to walk around and ask where it is. Wow everybody cycles there and you know how I said old, German ppl vacation in this area? They also cycle!!! Some were super old and some medium old, but still impressive. You don't see old adults and elderly cycle in Vancouver. We cycled for about 6 km, not very far, but we stopped in b/w towns and vineyard to take photos and to eat. It was weird, each town we stopped at nobody was there. Like locals and tourists maybe only saw 10 ppl... Luckily we found a restaurant opened so we could eat. There were also lots of places hat have signs that say wine tasting or wine something, but nobody there, doors closed. And it felt like we were stepping on ppl's driveways when we would try to look around. We think it's a long holiday, end of tourist season, EVERYBODY away on vacation at the same time or b/c the river boat timing doesn't have ppl visiting these towns at certain hrs of the day and therefore no need to go to work. Either way, it's not like farhan and I were the only ppl on the bike trail. We saw tons of ppl biking. So the side of the valley is covered in vineyards and sometimes you can go right up to the vines b/c there no blockade or it's flat enough. Oh ya the vineyards are usually grown on VERY steep hills, almost vertical, crazy to think how ppl pluck the grapes. The grapes are white and small. When we started off biking the sun was out but bY the time we got to our last town it was spitting rain off and on, but it was still warm. We biked down one side of the model river and at this town called poltersheim, you can take a "ferry" w/ your bike across the water to "beilsheim" and either bike back or take a river boat back to where we started. By "ferry" I mean this thing was a barge w/ rails. That's it. Just a piece of wood that floats. We decided to take the river ferry back to cochem thinking it would be faster.... But we were so very wrong. The ferry was SOOOOO slow, that we saw bikers along the side of the river cycling faster than our boat!! If this was an amazing leg race we would've chosen the wrong type of transportation and come in last!! I think it was slow b/c there's a canal where two rivers meet and we have to wait for these boats to go thru the canal, have the water level drop and then we can move forward again. Anyway, it took us a long time to get back to cochem and finally back to st goar, where we were sleeping. That night I had spatzel w/ pork and mushrooms. Spatzel is a German noodle. Looks like udon noodles. They will an fry it or boil it. Wine and food here is super cheap. Like wine is 2.5 euro for .2 liter and that's usually about $10-12 glass I. Vancouver for less than .2 liter.... In other words I get more volume for a ceap price here than in Vancouver where they over charge on liquor. Entree meal is around 6.5 euro up to12-14 dependi g what you get. Transportation is what's most expensive. Train tax can be 10 euro, Rhine river boat was 20 euro.... So that was day 1... Day 2 is today and we took the boat that runs along the Rhine called KD boat down south of the Rhine. We find that you can't really go hop around towns easily b/c of the boat schedule so you have to pick which town to explore, also if you get to a town after it's "peak" you could find out that there's no on there and places may have closed by 3pm!! It's really weird... Also, we are the only minority we saw during these 2 days.... Oh wait, I saw one Asian couple and then it looked like a Japanese/Chinese tour group was around. Otherwise these 2 days, only German elderly....young ppl don't come to Rhine valley I guess. We stopped at this town called Rudesheim, it was very busy, and looked to be very lively, catered well to tourists, giving the stereotype small German town feel. We only had an hr there and we were so hungry b/c the boat from st goar to Rudesheim was about 3 hrs so we had no choice but to find a restaurant, early quickly and to get back on the boat b/c it was the only time we could get on it to go back up the river to a different town. Like I said, the timetable for the KD boat is not super flexible. So we liked the vibe of Rudesheim and was sad to leave it without really seeing any of it. The reason we left for our next town was b/c we were told Bacharach was super. Ice, better than Rudesheim... I realize now it ,sy be b/c it's a lot quieter and architecturally white old German town cute... BUT again... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?!?! We get there and it feels like a ghost town. A few stores are open, butt b/c it's so quiet you're not even sure if they really are or if you're intruding on someone's space. We stopped and ate some cake, which look amazing in the bakeries, and then just aimlessly strolled around. All in all it was a very quiet day and quiet 2 days in the Rhine. Oh we saw a lot of castles when we sailed down the Rhine, lots of castles!! So cool, like a ferry tale. Also saw LOTS of trains, maybe 1 every 5-10 mins. Ok farhan and I are all packed and ready to get to Croatia!! Looking forward to the warm weather and the clear waters to swim in. We're staying in rental apartments there so not sure what the wifi situation will be like so don't be alarmed if you don't hear from me. Love you all, Helen PS- I typed this super long email o Farhan's iPad. ... Impressed?!? My forefingers hurt.... :)