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We took another last-minute trip in April, 1998, this time to Germany.  We flew from Newark to Duesseldorf and travelled all around the Rhine and Mosel river valleys.

We started our trip in the city of Trier with all its historic monuments, including the Roman Porta Nigra (Black Gate) (below) which served as the entrance to the main promenade of the city.  We took a guided tour (unfortunately it was in German, not English since were were there out of season so tours were limited), which took us to the Amphitheater and highlighted the churches and other historic monuments.   From Trier we took a day trip to Luxembourg and mostly did a walking tour of the city, then took a train to Brussels, Belgium, but got off at the wrong stop and ended up just taking the next train back.  

Our next stop on the trip was Bad Wimpfen, a small town on the Neckar river which was the perfect image of an old German village, was completely empty of tourists when we were there.  The old city remains surrounded by stone walls and has two towers overlooking the valley.   The Blue Tower (below) has been built upward to have a multi-turreted top, while its counterpart, the Red Tower simply has a flat top.  From the top of the Blue Tower, we had a great view of the city and the river valley, as well as one of the picturesque churches in Bad Wimpfen (below).

From Bad Wimpfen, we took a day trip to Stuttgart, where we visited the Porsche and Mercedes museums and enjoyed looking at cars, both old and new.  Unfortunately, this was one of our only days of sunshine and we spent much of it inside, but we had a nice walk in downtown Stuttgart as well.  Below is one of the Porsches that I found amusing - a pink car that is labeled with all the parts of a pig, as if it were a butcher's map!

We then travelled to Ruedesheim, a town on the Rhine river that was fairly touristy, but was still quaint and enjoyable.  We took the cable cars to the national monument overlooking the river valley (below) while the weather was still nice.  The next day, the rain was back, but we still took a cruise down the Rhine to see the many castles along the way.  Our photos didn't turn out too well, but that didn't dampen Greg's spirits (below).

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