Saturday, May 28, 2011
Our 28th wedding anniversary, on May 28. Do anniversaries work the same as birthdays, this then being our “golden” anniversary? It was (mostly) a very nice day either way.
We woke up, had breakfast, then finally decided it was time for Scott to get up as he said he could come with us. Once he was up and ready, we headed over to the base first. Another pass, this one is for tomorrow as well so we won’t have to get it again. Went to the military clothing store as Steve wanted to look at Spangdahlem T-shirts. He walked out of there with a tshirt. Yep, and a sweatshirt and jacket as well. I settled for just a tshirt, actually my first of the trip. Then a quick commissary trip and we were on our way toward the Rhine. I had set the nuvi to “shorter” which usually turns out to be the scenic route. Today proved to be no exception to that. We stopped for gas at Wittlich, then continued on some very scenic roads. Some were not much wider than our driveway, as Steve pointed out. We got to Bacharach after a drive of about two hours. Bought our tickets for the next boat cruise up the Rhine to St. Goar, about an hour’s cruise away. Ate our lunch (late) while we were waiting. There was quite a large crowd waiting to get on, and the boat was already pretty full. I got separated briefly from the guys and tried to find a place where we could see. No such luck. Went back and found that they had taken Steve’s ticket from him, while letting Scott and I keep ours. To make a long story short, found out at St. Goar that we had been given three pieces of paper, in German of course. One was the ticket for all three of us from Bacharach to St. Goar. One was the return ticket, again for all three of us. The third was the receipt. Had this been explained to us when we bought the tickets, might have made things much easier! (And the ticket clerk spoke pretty good English.) Anyway, the trip up to St. Goar was not so pleasant as we couldn’t see much and were trying to resolve the ticket situation part of the way. Unbelieveably, we made a stop up river and loaded on MORE people – I wonder what the capacity limit was. Definitely not room for everyone to sit down, even in the “no-view” seats downstairs.
We got off the boat in St. Goar and had about 45 minutes to walk around the town. Just enough time for a little souvenir shopping and an ice cream cone. Scott treated as we were almost out of euro cash and hate to get more with such a short time left. Scott and I both had kiwi ice cream, that was really good! Steve stuck with mocha and chocolate. Back to the boat, and thankfully this boat was better designed and not nearly so full so we were able to go up on the top deck and get three seats at the railing. Made for a much more interesting cruise back to Bacharach! I had the Rick Steves book with me which gave a lot of information on what we were seeing as we cruised along. Soon enough we were back at Bacharach and headed toward Spangdahlem on the autobahn this time. Still amazing how fast some of the cars in the left lane (passing lane) are going!
When we got back to the Spangdahlem area, we headed to a local restaurant that Scott recommended. Scott was with us – yes, it was our anniversary dinner, but how many chances do we get anymore to have a nice meal with our oldest? Not sure he’d been to an anniversary dinner with us since our 2nd anniversary, when he was just a few weeks old.
Scott and I both had chosen meat meals (mine assorted steaks, his assorted game steaks) that we got to cook ourselves at the table. Small heated stones were brought for us to do that. Very interesting! Steve opted for an already cooked steak and said it was good as well. Both of the guys had a tall beer, Erlanger I think it was called, and I had a coke light.
A nice way to spend our anniversary. Tomorrow I don’t think we have many plans – just getting things together as we will have to leave VERY early on Monday morning to get down to Frankfurt, get the car returned, and check in for our flight. Monday will be a very long day!
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