A Trip to the Mosel Valley

Windy said that she would like to go somewhere in Germany while she was here, and I told her to pick the place!  She chose a cute little town on the Mosel River called Cochem.  It had great wine, fun shopping, and lovely castles.....  We stayed in a town called Ernst, about 5 miles down the road.  As soon as we dropped our bags we drove into Cochem, with some nice sights along the way.

The town was just adorable and has Reichsburg Cochem looking over it.

Our first stop was, of course, some Mosel wine tasting.  Up and down the river there are acres and acres of grapevines that produce some very tasty wines.  The wine is a bit on the sweeter side but not too sweet.

Misty came a long with us!  She's a hoot and so fun to be around, but she is leaving us at Christmas for Texas :(

This very sweet girl (can't remember her name) let us taste a few wines and even a peach liquor that was very strong.  Then she offered us a little tour of the caves under the vineyard where they stored some of the wine.  She LOVED Americans...she told us that over and over...:)

We saw this cutout of the owner of the winery and thought, from a distance, it looked just like our friend Claire's hubby!  Close up..no way!  But it was funny.

The town was super quaint and had fun little shops to explore.

This shop was a little too fun....those are all different liquor flavors that you can taste test....we tested!  The girls even bought one that was a chocolate/chili flavor...I stuck with the peach!

And here we are being silly at the local bar.  I think we were the only Americans there and we definitely got a show that night!

The next day we were off to take a cruise along the Mosel.  It was a perfect day!!  Windy always lucks out with the weather when she visits.

This is the little town we stayed in

The vineyards

And that is the cute little B&B where we slept

We got to experience going through a lock.  It was quite neat!  We entered this section and got sealed in, and then the water began to rise.

You can tell here how low we are and how high we will be...

The water gushing in

And then we reached the top and sailed through

Beilstein, another adorable German town, known as the "Sleeping Beauty of the Mosel."  We did not have time to get off the boat and explore though 

The ruins of Castle Metternich tower over the tiny town

Now we were headed back through the lock.  This time going in and sinking down to get back down to the level of the river

We ordered some yummy lunch on the boat and had a nice ride back to Cochem.

On our drive home we decided to take a little side trip to see Burg Eltz.   Rick Steves (very good travel book author) says it is his favorite castle in all of Europe.  So after a curvy drive out of the valley and a kilometer walk through the forest, you turn a corner and there she is....beautiful!  

The castle is just nestled in the forest above the Mosel.  It's one of the few castles that has never been destroyed....my theory, they couldn't find it!  Part of the castle is open to the public and the other part is still lived in by the same family that has owned it since the 12th century.

You can only tour a small section of the castle and it has to be a guided tour.  The English one was every 30 min or so.  We didn't want to wait so we joined the German one....can you say TORTURE!?!?  We giggled liked teenagers through most of it.  Just nodded and laughed when the other Germans did.  We did get in trouble a few times for taking pics because we didn't understand him when he apparently stated "no photos!!"  We made it through the tour and felt pretty fluent in German by then....hahaha!

Jolly gold Sinterklaas

It was a FUN trip!!  We even got to speed fast on the German autobahn (no speed limit!).  Although I thought I was going pretty fast, I'm sure some drivers were thinking I was a turtle.  Mike drives on it all the time, and I always tell him not to be a maniac...

Sadly, Windy had to leave the next day!  Always a fun adventure when she is here and I'm so glad she takes the time to come visit me!!!!