Despite mostly gloomy weather, we are having a wonderful time. The pace is fast and furious. Today we toured the castle in the beautiful city of Heidelberg and saw a barrel with a capactity of 58,000 gallons of white wine. Unfortunately, the barrel is empty these days. From there, we sailed to Rudesheim and took a quick tour of Siegfried’s Mechanical Museum and it’s huge collection of bizarre musical machines.

After a bit of wine tasting at the nearest weinstube, we tried our first Rudesheim Kaffe. The drink consists of Asbach brandy, sugar and coffee topped with a large scoop of whipped cream and yummy chocolate bits. Delicious!

Finally, we dined on pork and sauerkraut at the Rudesheim Schloss. The food was fantastic! The only odd thing was that the restaurant’s excellent wait staff and band catered way too much to Americans. To begin with, there were American – not German – flags on each table. That seems a bit odd to me. Then the band played music suited only to an American audience. Sure, they threw in the occasional Beer Barrel Polka, but went way-y-y too far to make us feel like we were anywhere but in a restaurant in Rudesheim, Germany. They played such well-known German folk tunes as John Denver’s Country Roads, The Yellow Rose of Texas and even I Did it My Way. Things got really wierd though, when they perfomed the dreaded chicken dance to the delight of the half-drunk American crowd. This was about all I could take, so we strolled slowly through the invigorating evening mist back to our ship for an after dinner cocktail. We’d need our strength – tomorrow will be another busy day…

More photos…