Germany

Anita, my mother-in-law was so kind to watch the kids so Jake and I could take a short getaway. We considered cities like Venice and Prague but decided to do roadtrip to Germany to do castle stay on the Rheine river. It's a good thing we did because the airports ended up being closed due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

This is the room we stayed in
We arrived Wednesday afternoon and had some time to kill before our Rheine river cruise to see some more castles. We walked to the train tracks and flattened some Euros. We were acting like kids...we had a lot of fun doing that.
This is a view of our hotel from the river. Castle Liebenstein.


We made a 30 minute stop in a small town called St. Goar.
A highlight was browsing the local Christmas shop filled with nutcrackers, pyramids, cuckoo clocks, etc. It was very tempting to buy something!

This is the view from our castle

The castle had a really fun dining area. We came back from our river cruise and we noticed a candle lit table the was "reserved." It was for us! We had the most AMAZING food. I've never been too fond of German food but this was out of this world. Jake got a delicious pork spaetzel (type of pasta) with a mushroom sauce and Claus (the owner of the hotel/restaurant) recommend me the "Lady of the Castle" meal. It was fantastic! Pork medallions with pineapple, white asparagus with some kind of yellow sauce on top. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Turns out we were the "Kings children" as Claus put it. We were the only guests that night. I love off season!!

The town of Bacharach