A Relaxing Day in Boppard

Today was a much needed relaxing day. We stayed in Boppard -- no driving and not too much walking. We slept in a bit, ate breakfast downstairs, then took our time getting ready before heading out to enjoy the wine festival.

We did a little souvenir shopping on the town square, ate crepes, enjoyed a couple of glasses of local wine and watched the bands play -- bands of the more traditional nature, more marching band than contemporary music groups. It was very lively and there were a number of large tourist groups in town today -- including one Japanese group and one English-speaking group that included a number of older Americans.

Then, we took a mid-afternoon nap.

Moon rising over the Rhine.

And woke up to stroll along the Rhine and mill about town some more before buying a bottle of wine, two bratwursts in buns and coming back to our room to watch the evening fireworks.

The market square was incredibly crowded tonight and folks began snagging their spot along the Rhine more than an hour before fireworks were scheduled to start, so we considered ourselves very fortunate to have a prime seat on our balcony.



Couldn't ask for a better seat for the fireworks.



We were directly across from the fireworks on the opposite side of the river. We had our wine and food, a warm blankie and all the conveniences you could ask for. It was a pretty impressive fireworks display. I only captured some of the early fireworks on camera and video. Per usual, they grew in scale and complexity as the show progressed, but I wanted to enjoy the show not be behind the camera lens all night. 



So, that was our very relaxing, do-nothing day. Tomorrow, we hit the road again -- backtracking to Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Boppard

We drove to Boppard yesterday. It was a 6-7 hour drive from Prague. We arrived at the hotel around 6 p.m., ate dinner at a restaurant a short walk away and went to bed. As we were getting ready for bed, we discovered we left a small gift we had bought in Prague; we're not sure where we left/lost it, but our best guess is that we sat it down when we were trying to pay/validate the parking garage ticket and failed to pick it up when we walked out to our car. We were incredibly disappointed, but at least it was a very inexpensive gift. There are much more valuable or sentimental things we could have left behind.



The view from our balcony in Boppard



Boppard is a cute little town in the wine country, in the Middle Rhine region. Our room overlooks the Rhine River.

The weather is supposed to be sunny and in the high 50s or low 60s all weekend. That's about what it was today. It was rather chilly out tonight, but comfortable during the day.

Lotus Evora S in Wiesbaden

We drove to Wiesbaden today. It was a rather uneventful trip other than walking and seeing another city. The most exciting thing was probably having our 2nd and 3rd Lotus sighting. Scott saw one on the road in the Czech Republic; I missed that one. Then, there was an orange Lotus Evora S at the Wiesbaden City Fest where they had a bunch of new cars from various manufacturers. That was the only Lotus. Scott talked with the guy that was there and sat in the car. The other Lotus we saw was an older yellow Elise. We passed it going the opposite direction on the way back from Wiesbaden.

There's a wine festival going on this weekend. It started today, so we had a glass of Reisling from one of the local vineyards this evening. We'll stick around Boppard tomorrow for the wine festival as well, no more driving--until Sunday at least when we head to Rothenburg.

Austria this summer?

It's been more than 3 months since our list trip (our honeymoon), so it's well past time to begin thinking about and planning for our next excursion. High on our priority list at the moment: Austria in late summer.

I'm particularly inspired by this super cute homestay in Weyer. I doubt we'll actually make it there, but this photo is one of the things that sparked my recent interest in visiting Austria.

I imagine we'll visit Vienna and Austria's wine region. But there's so much we want to see. My in-laws bought me a guidebook for Austria for Christmas, so I've been pouring through it in my limited free time since, and the challenge will undoubtedly be one I face often - narrowing the list of places we want to visit down to a select few to keep us from traveling to a new place every day and wearing ourselves out.

Perhaps this rainy Atlanta weekend will provide the ideal opportunity to think further about our potential plans.
-Dana