A foggy day on the Rhine

We woke up to fog this morning. We hoped it would burn off before we headed up to this area on top of the hill where there are hiking trails through a forest. No such luck but we made the best of it. First was a gondola ride up, I’m a tad afraid of heights, but this wasn’t too bad.

It actually got foggier up on top of the mountain. There is a monument to honor the reunification of Germany in 1881.

Walking through the forest in the fog was really cool.

Teresa had to stop and look at the rocks.

We were walking through some vineyards when we came across a box where you could buy wine. Naturally, we had brought our own.

Oh yeah we didn’t have any glasses so we went old school.
After an hour, we got to the lift that would take us down to another city where we would catch a ferry back to Rüdesheim. We get there to discover they are not gondolas but ski lifts. Did I mention I am afraid of heights.

We were the talk of the ski lift. After hiking an hour, we had gotten hot so we were down to our short sleeve shirts. Everyone passing us on the way up were all bundled up. Eventhough they were all speaking German, we could understand that they were asking us if we were cold.
We got to the next town, Assmannshausen, to find only one restaurant open for lunch. Luckily it was very tasty. Teresa got her last schnitzel in German and I got a venison stew.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at Weingut Carl Ehrhard and had a great tour, wine tasting and chat with Carl. The winery was founded in 1884 by Carl’s something great grandfather and Carl is trying to rediscover “old school” wine making. He has quit making wine in stainless steel and only uses neutral oak and amphora to make his wines. The wines are stellar. We tried many rieslings from different vineyards. It’s so fascinating how vineyards can be so close but make such distinctive wines. He even opened up a Riesling from 1990 for us to try, it still tasted great.

As we end our trip to Germany, we have met a lot of really great people, had a lot of amazing food and drank a lot of amazing wines. Thanks for letting us share it with you.