Taking the slow lane and enjoying the vineyards: Bad Durkheim to St. Martin
After a consuming a little too much wine at the wine festival last night the blogger girl got a bit behind in the blog. So I have been put to work. (Blogger girl here: text by Keith, captions by Kathleen). We plan our bike tours in a slightly spontaneous fashion. While at the Wein festival in Mainz we met a young family from St. Martin. She told us how lovely it is and so we decided to go. Yup, that is how we do our research.
The staff at the Hotel Ab den Salinen were excellent. We managed to leave the electrical plug converter at the hotel in Worms so we were scrambling to find a replacement so that we could charge all our electronics we so much rely on. The kind lady at the front desk was able to provide us with the very adapter we needed. Some other poor soul had left one behind just for us.
We did a short excursion into downtown Bad Durkeim checking out the Cathedral and the world's largest wine barrel. We bumped into a couple other tourers who for some reason did not look like they really wanted to be there. We hope they looked happier at the end of the day. We took a picture because it made us laugh, but decided for privacy reasons it was better not to post!
This was such a great fountain. While we were admiring it a class of school children arrived from the train station for a three day field trip. I wished the teacher lots of luck. She was young. She will survive.
About 3 or 4 km out of town we had a small detour and pulled over to check out exactly where we were. A biker coming the other way stopped to ask if we needed help. To both his and our great surprise it was none other than the our new friend we met and had dinner with last night. So he took our picture and emailed his wife. "Look who I bumped into". What are the chances?
Check out the produce that was in his basket. He had the most spectacular head of lettuce and a couple of cauliflowers he was heading home with. It was such a fun encounter.
We had a beautiful ride into St. Martin. It was all rolling hills and vineyards. We had been in no rush to get going because St. Martin was only about 30 km away. It was another perfect day ... warm and sunny. So we just took it easy enjoying the beautiful scenery. A few hills were encountered but nothing too challenging. Remember hills are your friends! We both agree we would rather have a few hills than comletely flat terrain.
Castle on the hill. That was a bit of a surprise. This one was huge.
We stopped here for a cool drink. We sipped our drinks in the shade under the grape vines. How atmospheric is that? We really hadn't gone that far at this point, and when I told Keith we were averaging about 12 kph he burst into laughter. We really are poking around. This area is way to beautiful to rush through.
I have never seen so many vineyards and we have seen a lot of wine country in our travels. We seem to be the only North American tourists here. We haven't heard English conversation for days.
There are wine towns full of wineries every five km or so. They are all picturesque. It was a very up and down day though. I had to start reminding myself I like hills!
St. Martin lived up to its reputation and was a charming town. We found a room in a weingut and went out to explore and have dinner. There was a restaurant that was packed with people. We found a table and tried to figure out the routine. It is tough when you can't read a thing. Kathleen finally approached a young person who was able to translate self serve! You ordered your wine and dinner and then it was brought to the table. We were soon joined by another couple, and hallelujah, she spoke English. Kathleen ordered what the woman behind us was having...so they joined us too. What an amazing evening we had, with one person translating for the other five. It was great fun.
