After breakfast at the hotel we drove North along the Rhine river. We paused along the way in the tiny town of Lorrey for some coffee.
More scenic driving along the river, then we stopped again at Koblenz for some lunch. We sat in some outdoor seating next to a fountain in the historic town center. It was fun people watching (some guy with a shirt reading "Straight outta Koblenz") and before leaving we ducked into a gelatto shop for some ice cream.
On the road again to Heidelbeck, to visit Matt's family heritage. Chris, Steven, Nick and I were in one car, and the rest of the crew in the other. We drove fast and didn't stop for any bathroom breaks, so of course we beat the other car to Heidelback. We then took bets on how long it would be before the other car caught up (Steven won; they actually arrived much quicker than anticipated).
We stopped at a restaurant/bar/hotel called the Schlosskrug Heidelbeck that was originally a castle built in 1257. We chatted for a while with the bartender, who was a nice lady from Slovakia on a work visa, and she lived in one of the bedrooms upstairs. The owner came down and chatted with us for a while, telling us a little bit of the history of the place and the beers they had on tap.
We spent more time than we intended in Heidelbeck, and once back on the road had to drive crazy fast to -- you guessed it -- get to our next destination before the restaurants closed. In this case, we were heading to the Mugge restaurant in Bruchhausen-Vilsen. We didn't make it, but we did get a picture and interrupt the choir practice (small town?) they were holding in the restaurant after hours.
For dinner, we found an Italian place in town that was open. Midway through dinner, however, Steven had an unfortunate realization.
According to the fine print in our hotel reservations, they would only hold our rooms until 8pm. It was almost 9pm and we were still eating dinner. Steven immediately called the hotel... only to find out they had already given away 2 of our rooms!
Considering this was our twentieth night in Europe and we had not had a single hotel mix-up to date, we figured that was a pretty good track record (although let's not visit our track record for arriving at a town before dinner hour ended). We'll call this little adventure "nein" and you can read about it here:
CONVERSATION