Rhine Cruise and Onward

Saturday, July 16, 2016
Mainz, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
This morning we left the hotel in search of breakfast. A little voice from down in the stroller said "food outside." Yes, buddy, today our food is outside. We bought some soft pretzels at the train station and munched on those and sipped water. Then we found out the ticket machine wouldn't take credit cards or 50€ notes, so Bryan went back into the shop and bought a chocolate muffin in order to break the 50. But the man said they didn't have change for a bill that large. So he sold Bryan the tickets, but they cost 8€ more. Not sure what the deal with that was, but we now had tickets to board the train and a little bit of food, so we called it a win and moved on.

We took the train from where we were in Mainz to the main station and changed trains . This train took us to Bingen. We had planned originally to leave on our river cruise from Mainz, directly outside our hotel. But we figured out that it would be four hours on the boat, and the best part was further up. Also, after doing the lake cruise with Desmond in Luzern, I knew that he would want to be walking around and leaning over the edge, etc. and I didn't feel that four hours was the right length for that. So we opted to hop these trains to Bingen and take an hour and a half boat ride instead, in the area that seemed to have to most castles to look at.

We easily got our tickets for the boat and Desmond had some time to run around before we boarded. The cruise was nice. It was not as romantic as I had conjured up in my mind at home when we were planning our "anniversary cruise on the Rhine." It was a lot like a ferry ride. And the information about each sight/castle came over the speakers loudly by our table in five different languages. This sort of killed any peaceful ambiance . And there were lots of barges with freight on them going down the river. Oh, yeah: and a tired, wiggly, toddler. But it was still pretty and worth doing. It reminded us a lot of the gorge at home. Except with more castles. ;)

We ended our cruise in St. Goar. We bought more pretzels from a kind older woman in one of the shops along the main street. I carefully counted out our smaller coins to lessen the jingling of Bryan's pockets. We got on a train from there to Koblenz, a larger city where we could catch a train on to Brussels, where we will stay tonight.

We decided to reserve our seats and take a later train that would actually get there faster. This cost 30€ more for 1 hour less on the train, and 9€ to ensure we had seats together. Seemed worth it. And Bryan was able to use his credit card this time, which was good.

We wanted Desmond to get a nap of some sort in today. So we took him to McDonald's to have some lunch . We shared a chicken McNugget meal with fries. They give more sauce here than in Switzerland, and don't charge you for it. So that is nice. We went to a store and stocked back up on PB&J fixings, Pringles, dark chocolate and Oreos.

Then we had Desmond in the stroller and walked him around until he fell asleep. Once he drifted off we went and got a scoop of ice cream each. Bryan had mint and I had dark chocolate. This time around in Europe there have been a lot more opportunities for me to get chocolate sorbet. Last time we were here it was mostly just fruit flavors that didn't have milk.

We took our train ride from Koblenz on to Köln. We sat in the stroller/bike section with Desmond sleeping in the stroller. He woke up as people boarded the train, unfortunately. A family and another gentleman (with neither bikes nor strollers) sat down in the section with us. We rode for a long ways and then at a particular stop, a number of people with bicycles came in. By this time, Desmond was sitting in a seat and his empty stroller was just taking up space. They looked at the section and were a bit miffed. "This is for bicycles" one of them informed the family sitting across from us. Soon a railroad employee came back and launched into what sounded informative and instructive. However, it was in German. Bryan and I answered him, that we don't speak German. He left back to the bicyclists . The man next to Bryan leaned in and asked, "What did he say?" "Haven't a clue. We don't speak German." I chimed in "English only." The man indicated himself, "Dutch, originally" then looked across to the family of four. "Russian?" "Serbian." the father replied. I started laughing then. Eight people in this train car, and not one of us could understand what the native employee had said. "How international." chuckled the Dutch gentleman. I felt bad for the employee. Here he is in a position of authority and no one can understand his instructions in order to respect them. I moved Desmond back into his stroller at the very least so that we were using the section appropriately to the best of our knowledge. No one else moved.

From Köln we made a transfer to the high-speed ICE train where we had the reservations. Good thing, too. The train was packed! We ended up sitting by a group of young adult Swedes who were loudly telling one another stories and jokes and only seemed to change to English in order to curse . Why expletives in Swedish were insufficient, I do not know. That train was crowded, loud, warm, and I kept checking Desmond's diaper because the air didn't smell too good.

We were happy when we finally got out in Brussels and stepped right outside the train station to find ourselves already in front of our Hilton. They have given us a Junior King Suite with lounge access. The room is spacious and very nice. The food in the lounge served as dinner. Bryan said the pork cordon blue was tasty. When the hotel staff learned of my allergy, they brought me a generous plate full of smoked salmon.

~ Merilee

As we were putting this trip together using mostly points I was trying to stay flexible. Originally I thought we were going to fly out of Germany. Then we looked into flying through Iceland. This caused us to head to Belgium. The flight to Iceland didn't work out, we found a better flight home through Paris. We decided to keep our stop in Belgium anyways. It's always fun to see a new country.

We covered our hotel stay here using a Hilton Reserve card that have us 2 free weekend nights and Mer's Gold status. We had not been certain on that card as it had a $75 sign up fee, but we have more than gotten our money's worth in free breakfasts, lounge access, upgraded rooms, and better internet. It's been quite a deal. Hilton has made a great impression on us during this trip.

~ Bryan
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Comments

Andrea
2016-07-17

Pieter will be entertained to hear you passed thru the original Bingen. :)

I'm curious that you managed to find PB. I always hear of international travelers taking it with them because you can't get it overseas.

Foremans
2016-07-17

Not so romantic, but beautiful.

2025-02-10

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