Here we go again, in Germany!

 It's been ten years since I first started this blog to record highlights from our first big trip together after finishing at Carleton, so although there are many better (quicker?) ways to share trip photos, I'm resurrecting this blog for our visit to Frankfurt and Stavenger for nostalgia's sake. How the internet has changed in a decade - I'm pretty sure blogspot is all but dead. And I can write this update from my phone, which is convenient - could not do that with my college flip phone.

Annnywaay, we've been in Frankfurt for 2.5 days now. 

We started the trip with a tour of the nearby Rheine valley, which is a beautiful part of the country. The river runs from Switzerland north to the Netherlands, and is a pretty big shipping lane through Europe, so boat cruises are apparently a big thing. Although "you could not pay" Michael to sign up for one of the floating hotel versions that take a week along the whole length, we had a nice time on a two hour boat ride along a particularly castle-rich stretch of the river. 

The river was actually quite low (I don't think that sand bar is usually exposed) but the main channel is maintained for barges.

The river banks are quite steep, and make for very picturesque scenes with the castles perched on rockfaces and vineyards terracing the hills. 

I think that this valley defined what we think of when we (Americans, at least) think "castle". Lots of towers and stained glass and parapets. 

This one in particular. 

The tour we did also included lunch at a truly strange restaurant absolutely decked out with grapevine and sailor decor. It was so over the top it was kind of amazing. 

Kind of wondering what we signed up for here.

It's a very... Particular... Decor. 

We also did a wine tasting of local wines - the area specializes in dessert white wines, and particularly ice wine, which is made from grapes harvested after they freeze, which super concentrates the sugars so the wine is more like syrup. So tasty, but the little tasting volumes were also plenty. 

Finally, we stopped at a monument overlooking the river valley, erected in the late 1800s after one of the wars with France over the Rheine valley, celebrating that the river is German, and not just it's boarder. It's impressive.

We also saw it from the river, although when I took this picture I wasn't sure what we were looking at. 

All said and done, we had a pretty successful first day in Germany!

Today (Monday), we spent the morning exploring the natural history museum, which has a pretty great collection of fossils and an active paleontology research program. It was pretty neat. 

Om nom nom iguanodon 

One of the coolest exhibits was on the development of homo sapiens, and this (cast, presumably) of Lucy, our earliest found human ancestor. 

This afternoon, Michael has headed to the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies to meet with his collaborators, and I am going to explore some more. 

I'm not promisingly daily posts, but this is a nice way to record our travel adventures for posterity, since the internet never forgets. Enjoy!