Saturday - March 19, 2022
Today we begin our journey back towards the city to join up with our 7 day guided tour of Germany, Switzerland, France and Austria that we booked through Gate 1. We found Gate 1 through Travelzoo actually - they were advertising a 50% off special for G1's Danube river cruise. And since river cruises are expensive and pricing them out gave me a heart attack, 50% was my number! Woohoo! We had a really good experience on their river cruise especially when we couldn't finish it out in Budapest because the water level was too low to make it there. They booked hotel rooms for all of us, handled our luggage and transportation, put us on a boat that sailed up and down the Danube in Budapest for the spectacular night views, and arranged our meals. We had such a good experience with their service that my parents and my aunt and uncle used them for a guided tour of China. Even though it was hectic, it left a really good impression with my parents and when we looked to book our first COVID era vacation to Europe, we thought it would be easier with a guided tour with an agency that could hold our hands, arrange for a quarantine hotel if necessary, COVID tests, access to local guides, and a tour manager who can help us problem solve instead of doing it on our own like usual. While there are drawbacks to traveling in a group (diverse group of people with different personalities, conflicts, preferences, and speeds), we only had a total of 18 in our group (11 of whom are Chinese 😂 - so it was almost like a Chinese tour - but with much better service!) that for the most part contained polite and courteous people. A guided tour is still relatively fast paced and because it's catered for the masses, there will be things you want to do that you don't have time for on the guided tour - this is why we opted to arrive 3 days early to toodle around the Rhine ourselves and stay an extra 3 nights in Vienna at the end of the guided tour.
Anyhoo, we wake up early again and pack our suitcases! The plan is to eat all the delicious things, then take an hour or two to explore the extensive multilevel gardens before we check out and drive along the Rhine, hit another castle, join up with our tour group in Mainz and return our rental car.
This morning's breakfast was downstairs...even closer to the food! The view was gorgeous out the window.
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| my plate full of protein 😁 man I love me some German sausages - they're much more delicately spiced than the ones we have at home. Much less greasy too. |
After breakfast we started wandering towards the garden to explore before we leave 😢.
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| you can see the gate to the gardens - there's a real key needed - above the stairs behind my parents |
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| there's seating in numerous places to be able to admire the views |
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| this was inside a TREEHOUSE! It was amazing 😍 |
We sadly bade the castle goodbye and carried our suitcases down 2 flights of stairs. But yeah...I was not going to be able to get all of those suitcases to our car, especially down the steep path from the castle, so I asked for help when I checked out. A nice man responded to where we stood with our suitcases, popped them on his cart, and we followed him to our car where he put them in for us.
This time we set off, and instead of taking the freeway to Mainz like we did to Braubach from Frankfurt, we drove along the Rhine. Which was one lane...and more stressful than I thought. The castle we opted to stop off at was Rheinstein Castle - it was built in 1325 for the Archbishop of Mainz (then known as Fatzberg Castle), left to decay, and later purchased and restored by Prince Frederick of Prussia in 1823. In fact, Prince Frederick, his wife Princess Louise, and their son are still buried in the crypt in Rheinstein - you can see their coffins.
While the parking for Rheinstein was easy to access - it's literally along the road and you just pull in - getting to the castle entailed an uphill climb with LOTS of switchbacks 😅 - oh yeah, we're working off our ginormous breakfasts now!
I zoom in for a closer look and see this:
Um...Bad Assmannshausen??? To my unenlightened American mind, I think this means House of the Badass Man. And he is so badass, that he needs this painted onto his stone house.
Yeah, that's not what that means 😂😂😂
The village is called Assmannshausen - because it's known for their red wine, which in German is assmannshäuser. That's...not what I thought it meant...and if someone offered me red wine with that title, I would politely decline because I don't want to drink wine from an ass man. Either he likes butts and likes to proclaim this, or he's an ass and I wouldn't want to be his friend. But this is why we travel, to see new things and to learn new things and to expand our tiny minds so we're less moronic. "Bad" in German, means bath. So instead of the building proclaiming that it's the House of the Badass Man, it's actually saying this is the bathhouse (spa) for the village of Assmannshausen.
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| this castle has a REAL drawbridge yo! 😮 |
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the chapel built by Prince Frederick of Prussia - he, Princess Louise, and their son (they had 2) are buried in the crypt. This is built on a hillside which you can see below - viewing it from the back. |
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| looking into the chapel |
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| there are some steep metal stairs (clearly not original) built along the outside of the chapel so visitors can see inside the crypt housing the remains of the prince and princess. We weren't allowed to enter the chapel either, but we could look into it. |
I was the only one who walked down to see the crypt - after this, we headed up and inside the castle.
The interior seemed cramped - at least the first floor did. There were many spoils from hunting, which I presume to be original, and some suits of armor. The lower level wasn't too interesting, but there's spiral staircase off the kitchen that lead to the upper floors. There you will find the great hall, bedrooms, and study.
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| gorgeous stained glass window off the great hall on the second floor |
There were a lot of rooms, and a LOT of stairs (the castle is tall and skinny inside, so each floor didn't have a lot of rooms) and I'm only including a few of the multitude of photos I took.
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| they had a toilet! A fancy one! |
When you reach the highest floor, there's one room that remains unfinished, There's a note there explaining that this is deliberately kept this way so visitors know what the state of the castle was like when it was purchased and before restoration. It's amazing what they've done!
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| I'm standing on a real drawbridge! It's like all my Disney dreams come true! |
Once again, driving in a city not as bueno for me, but we reached the hotel, checked in, and moved our luggage upstairs to our room, Once at the hotel, we checked in with our awesome tour manager Sue who was waiting for all the participants in the lobby. We had an introduction at 7 that evening and dinner was included, but we got there around 3 pm. Sue immediately sent us off to a pharmacy within walking distance (just past some ruins of an old church!) that was closing early on Saturday so we could convert our COVID vaccine cards into QR codes we could then present or scan into our phones so we could access restaurants and shops and attractions. Europe was then (they've loosened up restrictions since) a lot more strict. They wouldn't let you into a restaurant without confirming that you're vaccinated. The servers and hostesses didn't just want to see the QR code, they wanted me to scroll down to see when I was vaccinated. I loved it! This necessitated me standing in line and talking to a nice pharmacist who spoke some broken English for about 45 minutes. It did make things easier for the remainder of our trip since there were many requests to see our QR codes, but my parents don't like waiting around, so I sent them to the Asian supermarket across the street to look for snacks. Because we were fully vaccinated with 2 boosters each, they needed to generate 4 QR codes per person, which meant it took a long time for all 12 of our QR codes to be done as they had to manually input everything and check everything against our passports too. 😵
Once this was done, we strolled the 6 or 7 minutes back to the hotel so my mom could chill in the room. I still had to return our rental car. Instead of driving the 20-30 minutes back to the Frankfurt airport, I paid more to drop the car off at the little Europcar office in Mainz. It was a lot closer and I could take the subway back...even if it would entail about 20 minutes of walking, it was easier than taking the train from Frankfurt. I was tired, but I opted to just return the car instead of waiting on it and having another thing to do later, so my dad and I set off to look for the rental car return office. It doesn't matter that I'm a middle aged woman who has worked for almost 20 years, own my own home, and that I'm an independent adult - he's still not comfortable with me going to strange new places by myself, so even though I know he was tired, he came with me anyway. My dad is the best!
We drove to an industrial area (I have no further photos for this day other than dinner and I don't know why. I could swear I took some photos, but I was also tired and likely delirious) and parked our car in the last space Europcar had in the little industrial park they were located in. As long as the car wasn't stolen we'd be fine since I purchased full coverage. I typically don't and rely on Amex's car insurance, but I don't want to deal with the hassle of arguing over coverage in a foreign country, so I throw money at it for peace of mind. Once we parked and dropped the keys off in the little box, we walked the 5 minutes to the Mainz Nord station.
This area was not inspiring. It didn't seem dangerous, but it wasn't very pretty. The station was small and aboveground, so we climbed the steps up after I purchased tickets using my credit card at the little kiosk. I think it was less than 3 Euros for each of us. Taking it a few stops, we got off at Römisches Theater station and walked the 10 minutes back to the Hilton. Passing by a Rewe, I stopped in to buy bottles of drinking water being really careful to find water that didn't have carbonation in it. I don't even like soda, so why would I want non-flavored carbonated water that makes me gassy?! I'm so uncultured. With my dad and I eat carrying a liter of non-carbonated water (there was a lot of Google translating used), we continued our short trek back to the hotel.
We had just enough time to sit back, drink some coffee and relax before meeting with our tour manager that night. She lead us to a conference room, handed out nametags that we only wore that night, and had us introduce ourselves and our backgrounds. Then they gave us beverages and lead us to dinner. The restaurants don't give a table to each party - rather, they a lot a certain number of seats...so there will be a seat for everyone, but you may not be sitting with your party. Once we realized this, we tried to get to meals earlier so we could sit together, since I don't like strangers. A super nice woman on a sisters trip from Chicago sat with us. She was a retired educator and we spoke about students and crime and the juvenile justice system throughout dinner. The food was pretty good - it wasn't the best schnitzel (that was in Innsbruck, which was super charming and I looooved it), but I thought it was pretty good. My parents were not fans - my mom wished it had some sauce (us Asians have our breaded and fried meats with some kind of sauce), but we were all fed and full.
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| I want to say this was carrot soup, but I didn't take notes so I'm not sure |
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| turkey schnitzel. It came with a side of a tangy acidic potato salad, which I generally wouldn't like, but it paired well with the schnitzel - the acidity cut through the greasiness of the fried meat and it was a good combo. |
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| pot of chocolate creme. Yum! |
After dinner we we back to our rooms to rest up for tomorrow. So begins the guided portion of our tour. I liked that I didn't have to plan anything or schedule anything or worry since that was the tour manager's job - all I did was mosey around on Google maps to see what we could eat around our hotels. Because food is life 😄.
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