Bacharach

We (Mom, Sydney, Adam, Rebecca, Noel, and Spencer) disembarked from the Rhein cruise at Bacharach, and decided to go exploring.

We walked through the city a little bit trying to find our way up to the castle where we were staying.

Most of the shops were closed because it was a holiday (All Saints Day, November 1).

There were lots of houses with dates and quotes on them (except I could not read them because they were in German).

There were some houses that were older than Columbus!

It took us quite a while to find the way up to the castle because it got closed off.

Once we found our way up, we had a really good view of the vineyards on the opposite mountains.
They were turning gold and red. The castle is on a mountain and then there is a valley and a mountain on the other side. If you looked down the valley there was this little classically German town.

Bacharach, the view out the window of our room

 
The castle was amazing.

The German youth hostel organization had converted it into a hotel. Our room was on the very top across from the tower.

Sunrise over the Rhein, the view out our room window.

We ate at the castle and the food was good. Staying in the castle was cool. It was warmer than I expected and smaller too. The tower was my favorite part. I went partway up the tower.

The castle tower from out our window.

We had a really good view of the river and the town from our rooms. It felt very normal; it did not feel like a castle inside. I expected rough stones or really fancy paintings and accommodations (like at Hohenzollern) but it just felt like a normal hotel room without a carpet and bunk beds.

The Heidelberg castle is huge but this did not feel as big inside. I think it looked more impressive on the outside and seemed more maze-like and confusing on the inside. There was a weird bathroom where you went in a door and then down a hall and at the end there was a little toilet and a sink.


If I went back I would like to walk around the city wall.

I would like to stay in a castle again.
--Sydney

Adam Ondi Ahman

These notes are coming a bit out of order. It has taken some time to get this up and get organized.

We visited Adam Ondi Ahman on 18 August 2016. We thought we had programmed the GPS to go to Far West and then Adam-Ondi-Ahman, but apparently we programmed it the other way around. The GPS apparently did not know the difference between a paved road and a dirt path. We were so glad that we did not get stuck. We did manage to get a thick layer of dust over everything. There are ways to drive there without all the dirt roads but we really did not see any of that.
--Dad

It is very peaceful there.

And we saw something that looked kind of like an altar.

There was a big field where Cain might have tended the sheep.

--Noel

It is easy to see (especially after looking at the soil in Vermont) why Joseph Smith was so impressed by the fertile fields of Missouri. The Great Basin must have really seemed a wilderness after living in Missouri.
--Dad

Der Igel Has Landed

I think about the first time that I visited Europe I noted a persistent fascination with hedgehogs (German: Igel). I never really understood it. Somewhere around the second week of September, when I was taking the trash out, I flipped on the light and noticed something moving around by the garbage. When the light came on, it just froze in place. It was a hedgehog. I had never seen one before. The amazing thing is it just stayed there (probably scared to death) and let us go around it and take pictures. Everyone in the family who wanted to look at it had the opportunity to do so. It did not move. They are cute little things and now I understand the fascination with them.

Waldenbuch

On October 1, we visited Waldenbuch, the home of Rittersport chocolate.

It was really fun. I found out that Rittersports were cheaper at the source (they were about a dollar). My favorite Rittersport was the Buttermilch-Zitrone. Es war sehr gut. One of my favorites was also the Edelbitter. Mom likes the Pfefferminz.

All of my candy bars were melted somewhat because I put them under my seat which was right by the heater.
--Samuel

It was fun. I liked the Pfefferminz. I liked the Straciatella Crisp. I liked the museum because I got to learn about chocolate.
--Spencer

That is the Rittersport shop and museum in the picture above. There were cheaper candy bars there.We did not actually take a picture of the factory part which is across the street. They have a wide selection of chocolate. The best one was Zitrone-Buttermilch. It is a summer special. Halbbitter is a replacement for semi-sweet. One of the stranger things is that they have tortilla chips or corn flakes in candy-bars.

Why, just why? It doesn't make any sense.

--Noel

I think that they taste good. The Knusper Tortilla Chips tasted so good. After a while they blend together. It is a bit of an acquired taste.
--Samuel

I love tortilla chips!
--Spencer

Plain cocoa beans taste surprisingly good (they had some to sample at the museum). The candy-bar I most want to try is the Pfefferminz-Marzipan that they had back in the 1970s or 1980s. It is my two favorites together.
--Sydney

The reason we don't have any more photos is that the camera ran out of batteries.
--Samuel

 Kathleen notes that the name for the store was clever: the Schoko-Laden. Translates into the Choco-store but sounds like the word for chocolate in German.