Day 17

I can’t believe it’s been 17 days already. It feels like forever! Today was a very tough day. My sore throat has progressed and now I have a cold. Hopefully some rest and a lot of water and cold medicine will knock it out. We left Cochem early today and the sky looked promising. Even though it was full of clouds we could see the blue sky hovering above it. The train ride was rather quick but the train station had no luggage hold. Now, that isn’t the worst thing in the world, but we were hiking up to Eltz Castle today and carrying a 30 pound bag for 8 km would be tough. After walking for a good 30 minutes, we finally found a place to store our luggage, thankfully. We started the ascent to the castle, but there really wasn’t much of an ascent at all. The 30 minute hike turned out to be rather pleasant. We made it to the castle but were disappointed to see scaffolding and a giant crane surrounding it. I guess they are doing some reconstruction on it. Oh well. I hiked all of the way up there so I was going to enjoy it as best as I could. We went down into the treasury room which was really nice and full of artifacts from as early as the 14th century. I even got to see some of the family jewelry which was also very beautiful and well preserved. After the treasury room, we waited patiently for our guided tour which, thankfully, would be in English. We started in the armory and were told right away that because the castle was still owned by the Eltz family and because it was private property we weren’t allowed to photograph anything inside. But don’t worry, I snapped a few pictures before the guide told us that. We went through several rooms, many of which were still full of the original furniture and had original flooring and the wood beam ceilings. Some were over 500 years old! It was a beautiful castle and very well maintained. After our tour ended we started the long journey back to the train station, picking up our backpacks along the way. We still had a long day ahead of us. We made it to Koblenz nice and early, but our transfer to Frankfurt took a while. Even though I have been on longer train rides, this 2 hour one had me going crazy. It was hot and stuffy and being sick wasn’t really helping. But, to make things a little better, the sun was shining nice and bright outside so hopefully that was here to stay. We finally arrived in Frankfurt and started scoping out dinner places. We found an Acapulco, but it was an Italian restaurant. We also saw a few Chinese places along the way, so we had options. Besides paying for water, one of the most annoying things about Europe is that they really don’t have public restrooms, and when they do, you have to pay to use them. Well, we encountered both today. I had to pay to use the restroom, and we couldn’t find a water source, so I had to pay to get some bottled water. We spent some time in the old town are and saw St. Paul’s Church which looked really nice from the outside. We walked through the city a bit more and came across a bunch of skyscrapers. I guess Frankfurt is a little more modern than Cochem or Moselkern. We also saw the Main Tower, which is the tallest skyscraper in Frankfurt (possibly in Germany, but I’d have to check on that). We started heading back towards that train station and decided that Chinese food sounded like the best option. I ordered a nice big heaping plate of chicken fried rice, which I think is becoming one of my favorite meals. And it was relatively cheap, so that made it even better. After I was stuffed with food, we headed back to the train station only to find that the train we though we were taking was actually some kind of tram and our ticket wouldn’t work for it. So we extended our stay at the station by about an hour to wait for the next train to Mainz. We boarded the ICE train which was probably one of the nicest trains we’ve been on so far. These trains usually do long journeys so that seats recline, there’s a nice pillow and you can barely feel the train moving. It was very relaxing. We had our switch in Mainz and dropped our big bags off there so we wouldn’t have to carry them down the Rhine the next day. We hopped on our train to St. Goar, which I learned that I have been saying that very very wrong, and made it into the city pretty late. But good news, the sky was clear and the stars were shining. Hopefully it stays that way because we are taking a boat down the Rhine River tomorrow, and I would prefer to not have it rain. That’s it for today!