After Saturday breakfast at the hotel we started the two-transfer train journey to St. Goar, a place we visited solely because of Rick Steves. He was very enthusiastic about this beautiful part of the Rhine River valley and we had wanted take a boat ride in a scenic area; the river between St. Goar and Bacharach (about 50 minutes south) has many sweet little towns and castles in various states of ruin and restoration.
I try to avoid transfers in long train journeys because that is always the time the trains are late. As was the case with the middle train on our journey; 15 minutes late meant we had to run across and down the Mainz train station to get the transfer in St. Goar. I was pissed off.
Then, in my irked state, we arrived at the Hotel Am Markt where I had emailed for a reservation a month prior, only to be told by the owner that he didn't have the reservation. (Actually the amusing part was that when we walked into the hotel, I was holding the RS book because we were using a map in it to find the hotel; the first hotel employee who saw us said, "Are you with the Rick Steves tour?" My dad said yes. But there was actually a Rick Steves' tour group staying there, so the hotel owner/check-in fellow asked us to point out our name from a printed email from the RS company. Then we had to explain that we were just using this book for our own tour.)
I was more pissed at this point, but luckily (for this owner), his son operates another hotel, Rhein Hotel, just down the street that had vacancies. So we stayed there instead. Lodging settled, we headed up a steep hill to see Burg [castle] Rheinfels which formerly spread all over the hills above the current town St. Goar. The castle is a much smaller, ruined version now, but with the RS self-guided tour, we got to learned about the castle life in the 1300-1600s.
Sunday morning, Father's Day, the Rhein Hotel presented the best breakfast that we had in Germany. The son, Gil, who now runs this hotel used be the chef at Hotel am Markt restaurant and he apparently still really enjoys preparing food. Breakfast in Germany regularly consisted of hard or soft boiled eggs, granola, milk, various breads and rolls (but never a toaster), butter, cream cheese, jams, sliced cheeses and meats, plus coffee and tea. This breakfast had all that but the ingredients were topnotch.
After breakfast, we took our bags onboard the Köln-Dusseldorfer company's boat down the Rhine River. It was excedingly scenic. Then we disembarked at Bacharach, walked around the little town until the rain started, tried to wait out the rain while having some coffee, but had to walk to the train station to head back to Frankfurt, where Dad would catch his flight to LA the next day. It's amazing how quickly 9 days can blow by.
