Fun in Deuschland!

Here is the first of two slideshows from our recent trip to Germany where we spent four days in the Rhine River Valley. This is wine country and we stayed in the little wine town of Bacharach. Our hotel, the Kranenturm, was part of the medieval city wall of Bacharach and we actaully stayed on the top floor of the tower that they used to load wine onto ships from. The tower we stayed in was over a thousand years old. Each day we climbed over 100 stairs to reach our room! We also climbed many other stairs and trails through the enchanted forests of the Rhine River valley to tour a number of the amazing castles which you will see in my next slide show... But for this slide show feast your eyes on some of the great German food, wine, and beer we had while there. My favorite had to be the Martin Luther beer we found at the Mainz beer festival. The Luther beer stand was a large barrel which had nuns inside serving the Luther and Katerina beer- as Luther and his wife brewed their own beer at home. The beer stand is extra fun to see if you know the story of Luther and his wife. In his lifetime Luther had helped some nuns eascape from a convent by smuggling them out in beer barrels. He found husbands and married off all of them except one whose husband-to-be died. Her name was Katerina Von Bora and she was the lucky woman who married the great Reformer. To my delight the Luther beer was dark!