Sunday 17 April

6-19C

Cloudy morning, clear blue skies & sunny from 4pm

OMG…..we had a wakeup call at 6am and were on the road at 7.30!We travelled south into the Rhineland on the German autobahn, then past Stuttgart into Bavaria with it's woods, farms and pretty villages.We broke the journey with a Rhine cruise and lunch, almost gliding past Lorelei Rock.The Rhine River is the third longest in Europe, originating in Switzerland and ending in the north at Rotterdam.In the town where we caught the boat, there were old Roman walls as the Romans settled in Germany along the Rhine for a while.The towns along the river are so quaint and there were several castles up in the hills lining the river.The Lorelei Rock is where a maiden used to sit combing her golden hair while waiting for the boats to come past so she could lure them onto the rocks.Nice!!There were lots if vineyards on the hills….guess this is where Rhine Riesling comes from.So it was about a 2 hour river cruise, we sat right up the front on the top deck so we could see everything but it was pretty cold as it was open air.Back on the bus again we made our way along the Rhine for a while before picking up the autobahn and heading towards Ulm.It's quite a long journey and along the way we passed a Formula 1 track at Schotenheim, lots and lots of fields of yellow which is, of course, canola and lots of vineyards. All the fields are so neat and tidy, the trees are grouped together neatly, the logging is neat, the excavations are neat, even the dead sunflowers died neatly!!We arrived at the hotel around 6.30pm, the included dinner is at 7.15. We stay here for 1 night so no time really for exploring.WiFi is expensive at this hotel so a word doc will have to suffice until l can get online for free.