Day 18

Today was an interesting day. It started off with the sound of rain at 7 am. Yes, even after that clear sky last night, it was raining this morning. We had a nice breakfast at our hostel and then walked out into the city. We walked up to the castle, but decided not to go in because of the lack of time and poor weather. Instead, we found a nice café and had some coffee while we waited out the weather. After our mini break, it was almost time for the boat to arrive. So we made our way outside and even though it wasn’t raining, it was very cold and windy. Our boat finally arrived and it was huge! (To me at least) I was very glad to see that it had an inside portion. Today was our KD Rhine cruise trip. We would be traveling all of the way to Mainz. We spent our time inside mostly, only running outside when there was a good photo opportunity. We arrived in Bacharach about an hour later and left the ship. The city was pretty nice. At least there was no rain. We walked up and down the streets and made sure to stop inside a pharmacy to get cold medicine and tissues. We continued walking and stopped at the Altes Haus, or the Oldest House. It was from the 1300s! After some more time in the city I was getting hungry for lunch. But in order to appease my cold I decided on a nice bowl of chicken soup (no noodles, but there were these weird crunchy balls of something in it. But it was so good, and made me feel better. After lunch it was almost time to board our next boat. But first, we had to stop for ice cream. After boarding the boat, we were in route to Rudesheim. After a nice 2 hour boat ride, we arrived in the city which felt like it was on the brink of rain. Thankfully, it didn’t. We walked down Drosselgassestrasse, which is the narrowest street in the city and is lined with shops and cafes. It was very busy, and very narrow. We walked through most of the city and saw almost every street. Because we still had an hour and a half until our boat was due to arrive, we decided that it might be better to take the train to Mainz. That was the mistake of the night. We had to go to Weissbaden first and then transfer to Mainz. That part was fine. And then as soon as we got to Mainz we had to check for times to Heidelberg and then grab our luggage that was stored. Well, we got off the train and saw that the next train to Heidelberg was in 3 minutes. 3 minutes!! And we still had to get our luggage. But I guess there was no harm in trying, which we did, only to later learn, after running up and down 3 flights of stairs, that the train to Heidelberg only ran on weekdays. Well, the next one was due in 20 minutes. That wasn’t so bad. But, 20 minutes came and went. And there was no train. So we had to wait for another 20 minutes for a train to Heidelberg, which was supposed to get us there an hour and a half later. Oh well. We hopped on that train and made it to the end of the line in Friedricks something or other, only to find out that our transfer to Heidelberg had already left because the train we had just been on came in late. So now we had to wait another hour to go on a 10 minute train ride. And it was cold. And we were hungry. Well, we made it at least and stopped at McDonald’s on the way to our hostel. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Going to Austria!