Today is Sunday.
Normally on Sunday I get up at 8am and watch Sunday Morning on CBS (in my pajamas) and then have a rather slow and relaxed day. I tell you this because today was not a Sunday that my legs agreed to have.
We got up at 8am. OK there. We showered and got ready to go and were out the door by 9:30. We drove an hour and a half to meet Christine and her family for church and lunch.
It was so good to see them again. I don’t think they expected to see us again and it only took us four years to return! But here we are. Church was church – except in German so I have no idea what the standard topic of the lecture was though if the point is to meditate and commune with God then I did that. I also pretended to sing in German while diligently holding the song book to the correct page.
After church we walked back to the house and had lunch. Christine’s husband is an excellent cook and we had a pork roast with two kinds of potatoes and broccoli and cauliflower and a yummy salad. With gravy and a butter sauce for the veggies. I ate too much.
Then we piled into the cars and found an ATM machine before heading to the site-seeing tour for the day. We went to Stolzenfels Palace which is a UNESCO world heritage site and I really like world heritage sites. The guide book describes it as “The most beautiful building of the Prussian Rhine Romance Era.” It was very lovely.
But it was at the top of a really high hill. OK – it’s on the top of a ridge that overlooks the Rheine river. But they made me Climb the mountain. And it was cold out. And I was probably a tiny bit whiny. But we all made it to the top – mom and Christine chatted the whole way up. Nathan practically had to drag me up – I was not feeling energetic.
At the top we got the family rate and some English language guide books to use on the tour since they only have guided tours. I will leave it to you to find out more about the castle if you’re inclined to do so but I recognized some of the paintings and was all gaga for the furniture. Once you get inside the castle you are made to wear little felt slippers over your shoes. It was like most of us were skating trough the tour.
Nathan and I left mom in Christine’s care until Tuesday. We drove back to the condo and attempted to stop at the grocery store but it’s Sunday so it was closed. We got gas and a big bottle of cola light and are now watching BBC news.

So far we have seen three castles. I don’t remember having seen any on our last trip so were up three castles 🙂
I’m going to try to load some of they pictures to Pintrest later tonight if I can. Not sure what we will do tomorrow.

After a disappointing arrival in Rheine, we woke up in our WiFi-free zone. It was a nicely priced hotel but the toilet was down the hall and the shower and sink were right in the room. Mom had her own room though and I got the best night sleep so far. The hotel is over a bar so in the morning we had breakfast downstairs in the bar area. It was all good.

We drove the short distance to the Kloister and walked up to the building where there was a very nicely dressed party of 30 forming up. We went in but you can’t get into the museum until it opens which is at 2pm on Saturdays. So we left.

We drove to Kalkar. Last visit we were accosted by the tour guide in Kalkar and one of the six little Predella flower boxes was out for cleaning. Very few of my pictures were useful to me. We arrived at the church in the late morning and found our way to the parking lot and then walked the two blocks to the church and went in the door. There were several other people in the church and one guy up on a ladder with some sort of vacumn machine. We started taking pictures – lots of pictures. At some point the guy on the ladder let us know that he was leaving and would be back in ten minutes and since we were the only people left in the church he was going to lock us in and we could continue to take pictures. And so we were all locked in the church until he returned which was closer to twenty minutes later.

But all of the little boxes were there and we could just snap away! We were so lucky. Lots of good pictures this time.

From there we proceeded to Xanten. Xanten was an old Roman town and parts of the old wall still stand. As faithful readers from the last visit will know – the church in Xanten was undergoing extensive renovations the last time I was in town. It looks lovely now as they did a great job and everything is back where it belongs. And so we hunted out the Kloisterarbeiten that I just know they have and I pointed out the only one we found on our last visit. Well they have an even better one! It dates to 1510 and has some very nice peacocks all out of silk. It was enough to make me go Squee!

What a fabulous day. We got in the car and headed for the condo but the condo address was misread by the GPS and we ended up in Luxemburg so after getting directions and driving another hour and a half we made it to the condo. It’s a one bedroom with a foldout sofa but surprisingly spacious with a full kitchen. Pretty peaceful but quite a drive.

After a large supper of very yummy food – we’re back at the condo and falling asleep, singing “I’m in heaven…”