The River Rhine is a land of wine and castles!

We arrived in Koblenz late on Monday night. After checking into our hotel room, we had just enough time to walk around the historic part of the city. Koblenz is where the Mosel meets the Rhine. The area is called the Deutches Eck and is marked by a giant statue, which was apparently replaced in the 1990s (according to google it was damaged in WWII.)


Statue where the Mosel meets the Rhine

Across from the Deutches Eck is a huge fortress, which is quite beautiful when its all lit up at night. I actually found it less impressive during the daylight.


Fortress in Koblenz

Koblenz is also all about shopping. Everything from Prada to a TK Maxx are here. (TK Maxx is basically TJ Maxx. I actually bought a sweater from here because the weather was cooler than I had anticipated.) I would call this a must-do for anyone who likes to shop. I also enjoyed walking along the river front. There's even a gondola that will take you up to the fortress, but we didn't do it.



Selfie on the statue in Koblenz

We used Koblenz as a starting point for our road-trip down the Rhine. The area from Koblenz to Mainz is considered the most beautiful, for this reason it is also heavily traveled by tourists from all over the world. We enjoyed stopping in some of the small towns and I especially loved getting to see all of the castles along the route. We didn't stop and actually walk around all of the castles, that would have taken an eternity, but we did stop at a few that seemed easily accessible.


Example of a castle (I'll look up the name of these later. I forget right now)





We also stopped at the famous Lorelei Rock, which was beautiful, but I can see why it was so dangerous for boats back in the day. The current is swift and the river twists and turns between rocky walls on either side of it. The Lorelei is the location of many boat wrecks, and the story goes that a woman would sit on the top of the rocks and her beauty would distract the sailors so that their boats would crash.



In front of Lorelei

Speaking of boats and transportation, there are really three ways to see the Rhine: boat, train, or car. We, of course, had our rental car and I honestly feel like this was the best way to go. The trains go pretty fast and they don't seem to stop at every town. I like the car because it gives me more freedom over when and where I travel. The second, and very popular, option for traveling the Rhine is to take a river cruise. I saw the boats going past, and it might not be a bad choice for certain people, but I consider myself to be somewhat adventurous and I think I would be bored with the river cruise because I like to be constantly moving and experiencing something new. It does look relaxing though, and I would probably consider a river cruise for a location that's more challenging, like Egypt for example.



What the rocks look like near Lorelei. See why it was so dangerous for boats?

Overall, I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed the Rhine region. It was much more beautiful than I thought it would be and there was a lot more to do in the little towns than I had expected. If we ever make it back to Germany, I would definitely want to spend a few days along the Rhine.





Typical Rhine town

View from on top of a hill

 

3 Countries in One Day

I haven't posted in a few days because wifi isn't as accessible as I had hoped it would be. We're almost an entire week into our trip now and time really is flying by fast. Monday we hit 3 countries in one day. We woke up in Antwerp, Belgium and had breakfast.


Antwerp city center. It was packed because of a music festival.
 

 We ate lunch in the Netherlands and walked around some castle ruins in Valkenburg, Netherlands.



Valkenburg, Netherlands

 We arrived in Germany in the afternoon and Kevin did his race car thing (see post below), then we checked into our hotel room in Koblenz, Germany and had dinner along the Rhine River.


Statue where the Mosel River meets the Rhine River in Koblenz

 

I'll try to do a brief synopsis of each city. We spent two full days in Antwerp which is just a beautiful city. For us, it was our first taste of an old European city center. It's dominated by a church, The Cathedral of Our Lady, but the city has several other interesting churches and historical buildings as well. FYI: if you ever go to Antwerp, almost everything is closed on Sundays. This was unfortunate since Sunday was the day we set aside for touring Antwerp, but we did still get to see a lot of the city. Also, the place turns to party town on Saturday nights. We didn't mind it, since we sometimes enjoy that kind of thing. And it isn't like "oh my gah.. lets get stupid drunk" type of party-scene, but there are bars that are open late. Anyway, that's Antwerp. And here are a few photos.


Brabo & The Giant's Hand (city center)

The same famous old statue with some drunk dudes hanging on it late at night.



Outside of St. James Church. The ornate details both inside and outside this church are a must-see.



Selfie in front of Cathedral of Our Lady. This church has some awesome works of art inside of it. I'm sure I'll do an art blog at some point on this trip.

 We walked around Antwerp on Sunday and hit the road again towards Germany on Monday morning. As I mentioned, we stopped in Valkenburg, Netherlands for lunch and to get out and stretch our legs at a castle. Here are a few more highlights:


Castle ruins in Valkenburg. This was a great place to stop and spend an hour learning about history.

This is what happens when you break the law in Europe. (No, just kidding, this doesn't happen)

 

No selfie today because we found someone to take our picture.

Kevin has already posted about our other stopover on Monday. He knocked a big one off of his bucket list, and I guess I did too since I sat shotgun for two laps. We ended the night in Koblenz, Germany where the Rhine meets the Mosel. More on that in another post...




Driving in Europe

Lier, Belgium

I've always had an interesting in driving, all kinds of vehicles in all kinds of ways, and driving in Europe is an interesting experience.  Sure different parts of the States have different intersection layouts, parking layouts and speed limits from each other, but at least the caution signs are familiar and the text is always in English. Arriving here even the lane lines on the road are unfamiliar and street signs are indecipherable. Our GPS has been doing a great job with lane guidance and frequent re-routes, but it's a little bit stressful making your way through tiny city streets that are randomly closed for construction or because of a festival.

Antwerp, Belgium

Every town and city in Belgium was having a festival last weekend, which made reaching downtown destinations (or finding parking near them anyways) a challenge. Belgians are very good at keeping to the right on the highway unless they are passing, but the comparison with driving on the German Autobahn is a little bit different. When there is no speed limit on the highway and everybody has to get out of the way of the very fast cars, they are very quick to move aside, and it seems to work very well.  We very rarely even saw brake light ahead of us, and most of the traffic seemed to move along very smoothly.  We haven't seen a single accident on any of the roads here yet and the attention that it requires to change lanes constantly to pass and be passed seems to me that it would keep everyone on their toes and reduce "surprises" that tend to cause accidents.

My track rental - Deceptively quick when you really put your foot down

It's a lot of fun when you get to be one of those fairly fast cars that people are moving aside for.  Today I drove two cars pretty fast.  I found out that our rental Volvo V60 (diesel) would do 185 kph (115 mph) with the throttle wide open on a long, straight, downhill stretch of the Autobahn, and I managed to get a track-rental VW Polo GTI up to 220 kph (135 mph) on the fastest part of the Nurburgring (the car had more room to go, I just couldn't get any more speed out of it in the room available).  Nurburgring is much more about technique and running a good line than going super fast, especially when the track is wet like it was today. At 13 miles long and with 70+ corners it is widely considered one of, if not the most, technically challenging race tracks in the world.  It's also a public road during the time it's open so there are all kinds of other vehicles, some going very, very fast, and others that you have to scratch your head about.

Even campers can drive a lap on Nurburgring

One of the things that you are warned against, especially as a driver new to Nurburgring, is running a timer or trying to set (and improve) lap times, so while I didn't run a timer, I did record videos of my laps just to see how my lap times went afterwards.  I didn't want to push it too much, but I wanted to have fun and do the best laps I could.  My first lap, with Amanda in the car, I did a leisurely 14:04. My second lap, driving alone, I worked to speed it up and cut a better line and got down to 12:03. For the third lap I managed to get Amanda back in the car again and pulled off a time of 11:09. My final lap (alone again) I ended up down at 10:24.  I understand a professional driver should be able to get the same car around the track in 8:40, and even though I would never be competitive at my pace, I feel like I did some very nice work considering I've never driven on a track at all before today (unless go-karting counts) but I think all the practice I did playing the track on computer games to memorize the corners paid off.

Visiting friends

Tonight we met up with friends of ours, Peter and Iris, to have dinner.  Peter is a 3D simulation master, who did some great work with us when we were doing that kind of work.  Iris owns and runs a restaurant, Essentieel.be, where we had a very late lunch this afternoon.  They are both fantastic at what they do, and they helped us pick a couple of local Belgian beers that we really enjoyed and probably never would have sampled otherwise.  

Amanda's beer was dark and rich and bitter, like good chocolate, and mine was a nice blonde Belgian beer.  We both loved the choices they made for us.

We had a lot fun chatting and catching up and we'll have to meet up again sometime soon.  On the back end of our trip we'll be back in Brussels during the Brussels Beer Weekend so hopefully we can meet up again and he can steer us to a few more excellent brews.

Peter and I

My former co-workers, Ryan and Scott, who also worked closely with Peter wanted me to say hi to him for them, so I did and he says "hi" back. :-)

Brussels: A City of Old and New

The drive from the airport to downtown Brussels was our first experience driving in Europe. The road signs are different, the red lights are much lower and off to the side, and all of the signs are in french. Oh yeah, and it was raining. Kevin did a great job though of getting us to where we needed to go safely.

Grand Place, Brussels

My first impression of Brussels is that it has an interesting mix of old and new.  Centuries old buildings are right next to buildings that are modern and clearly built within the past few decades. It's also a multicultural melting pot, kind of like New York City. We noticed a huge variety of different cultures and foods. It is the capitol of the E.U., so I guess this shouldn't be too surprising. 

Example of really old building next to brand new building.

We did some of the stereotypical touristy stuff, like take a picture at Mannequin Pis, but we also did a lot of walking and exploring of neighborhoods that appeared to be off the main tourist path. This is how we discovered one of the tastiest chocolate shops that we found, it was one of the only places we ran across where someone did not speak English at all. Here is a link to it. Wittamer.

Mannequin Pis taking a pis on Kevin's head

Me in a pretty garden (sorry, I don't know the name of the garden)

After exploring the city center we drove to the Atomium and took a tour inside. The Atomium was built for the World's Fair, call it Belgium's answer to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Kevin, as you may or may not know, actually spent some time in Brussels when he was about 14-years-old. He actually still has a T-shirt from his first visit to the Atomium, so we had to take a photo of him with it. 

Atomium

Kevin wearing his Atomium shirt from 1999

After the Atomium, we drove to our hotel which is about an hour away in Antwerp. Kevin's friend who lives in Belgium recommended it to us, thinking we would really enjoy staying in Antwerp. He was right. More on that tomorrow...

Taking Off

My first post for the blog and of course it's about technology. We've already completed our first flight and we're on our plane to Brussels, waiting to finish loading. We decided for our flight over that we wanted to pay the extra $80 each to get Economy Plus seats with extra room and free drinks justifying the expense for the improvement in comfort that will hopefully let us have a good first day in Belgium. I'm very well impressed already with how much more room there is in this seat, and the USB charging port you can see under the seat back monitor would be perfect for running a tablet the entire flight. At the bottom left of the photo you can see the A/C outlet for running a full laptop! I'm hoping to sleep but if I can't at least I'll be able to play some games. I don't know if I want to try getting any more Nurburgring practice without my steering wheel but some Fallout: New Vegas at 35000 feet would be interesting.

Packing for Europe

This is really just a test post to see how the Blogger app works on my phone. We have everything packed for 2 weeks, with plenty of extras as well and plenty of room in the bag for souvenirs. You're looking at 2 suitcases - one to be checked and one carry-on. There is also Kevin's backpack and my purse.