Cochem Castle on the Mosel River
October was a busy traveling month (and working month but that's for another blog) because I had two sets of visitors come. My first visitors were my Aunt JoAnn & Uncle Adbul visiting from Seattle. As I come from a family of wine-o's, we spent the weekend visiting the Mosel River Valley which is one of Germany's main wine regions. We rented an apartment and drove up and down the Mosel River tasting delicious Rieslings and Spätburgunders. We sampled our fair share of wine and enjoyed the fall colors around the castles. We visited Berg Eltz, a castle I went to last year with my parents and FINALLY the scaffolding curse has been broken and I got to see it without scaffolding.
Keith & me in front of the Cochem Castle.
So, the next weekend, my friend Julie came to visit. Julie and I lived across the street from each other growing up and reconnected last summer and decided to plan a bit of an adventure around Germany & a bit of France. Again, as it is so close, we decided to start our little road trip in the Mosel River Valley for one night. My friend Keith came for the first part of the trip and we ate amazing food and wine in a Medieval mansion converted into a hotel/restaurant. Rick Steves, the travel show host/author, recommended it and thus began my complete trust in all of his recommendations because it was such a great place to stay and eat.
Our final stop was in Staufen, Germany. This is another town recommended by Rick Steves in the Black Forest. Yep, THAT Black Forest- the one with the cake! And, we did try the cake. It was awesome. The Black Forest is also the home to Grimm's Fairy Tales and you could see in the dense forests how scary stories could have been quite believable. However, the forests were also punctuated with adorable villages and little houses covered in flowers. We did laugh a lot at the fact that sometimes we kind of felt like we were in the Vail Village. The designers of Vail Village did a good job of ripping off the German "Hansel & Gretel" building look!
We spent one day in Freiburg, Germany which is a university town near the Swiss border. It was gorgeous weather and enjoyable to shop in the little markets. But, once again, Rick Steves was SPOT ON! He said to stay in Staufen instead of Freiburg and he was not wrong. Stafuen was beautiful. And, interestingly, the man/character who inspired Goethe, Faust, was in Staufen and his 'Faustian Bargain' with the devil happened right in the town where we stayed. Nowadays, it is just filled with cuteness with some cute on the side.
The Black Forest is also known as the Cuckoo Clock region. We saw some clocks that were over $10,000 and were enormous. I'm not sure I'd be able to handle the amount of cuckoo-ing associated with a 5-foot tall clock. They were seriously loud!
We spent one day in Freiburg, Germany which is a university town near the Swiss border. It was gorgeous weather and enjoyable to shop in the little markets. But, once again, Rick Steves was SPOT ON! He said to stay in Staufen instead of Freiburg and he was not wrong. Stafuen was beautiful. And, interestingly, the man/character who inspired Goethe, Faust, was in Staufen and his 'Faustian Bargain' with the devil happened right in the town where we stayed. Nowadays, it is just filled with cuteness with some cute on the side.
The Black Forest is also known as the Cuckoo Clock region. We saw some clocks that were over $10,000 and were enormous. I'm not sure I'd be able to handle the amount of cuckoo-ing associated with a 5-foot tall clock. They were seriously loud!
So, that was basically my October weekends.This next month also is shaping up to be quite busy with two work-related trips. I will be going to Lisbon, Portugal to get trained to be a science trainer for the International Baccalaureate Organization and then presenting at the European Council of International Schools Conference in Nice, France. Then, home for Christmas which I know will be here before I know it!