Leaving Maastricht we turned our sights onto the prior capital of Germany, Bonn. Expectations felt rather high given the 'old capital' status, but there wasn't too much to show on brief time spent there. But, it was a Sunday - And Germany take their rest days very seriously. Aside from those selling food or drink, all stores were closed. Geschlossen. Beethoven featured in many windows in the old capital, their claim to fame. A plaque on a public toilet stated he was born in the same spot. Mhm.
We explored what we could. Bonn is a good-looking city, but not one to capture our attention.
Next, the sight Charlotte had been eyeing from the trip's inception - Schloss Drachenburg. After a series of wrong turns we pulled over and parked nearby a Tennis club then taking the Nachtigallental (Nightingale Valley) hike up the castle. There's some great little history about the route and it's name - Apparently, a monk got very irritable at the local birdsong so scolded them until they left, taking root in the aforementioned valley. Here's a great webpage that explains the history much better than this blogposter can. The hike up is pretty, well shaded, clearly very popular with the locals and is rife with birdsong. If we
Upon reaching the castle it was became clear there was a railway built specifically for taking tourists up the hill. A little further down the connecting road there was also a pay-to-use carpark that avoided the majority of the hike.
Entry wasn't terribly expensive to get in (12 Euro) and was made yet cheaper as we were both wise enough to take our student IDs with us. Thank goodness for student IDs with no expiry date. The inside of the castle was incredibly ostentatious, gold detailing and red velvet nearly everywhere, stained glass windows with stories and histories on them. One illustrated with dragons and the story of the castle. Another featured old Willy Shakes and other prolific influencers of the time.
With an additional wait we were able to go up even greater flights of stairs to the top of a tower for a stunning panorama of the surrounding area.
At the bottom of the castle was the tale of the castle's ownership - Individuals with huge sums of money buying, restoring it then selling it on etc and now finally belongs to the state. Oh, and there was that time period where the Hitler Youth were schooled there and manned anti-aircraft guns - Not it's finest moment.
Disappointingly, not a single dragon was to be spotted in the castle or in the panaroma offered by the tower. Though, the legend does state the dragon Fafnir was killed a good many centuries ago. Pity. We fear we may never witness a dragon if these heroes keep damn slaying them.
Following dragon-seeking, it was a short drive down to Kristall Rheinpark-Therme Bad Hönningen GmbH to camp for the night. This included dining at the Crotian restaurant on-site to give Lee some ceccapicca (please spell-check) nostalgia and introduce the little sausage treats to Charlotte. It felt a little expensive for what were small beef sausages with basic fries and the staff weren't especially friendly.
It would've been a missed oppurtunity for us to be on-site at a thermal spa and not attend it - so we did! It featured a variety of pools, both inside and outside, some more 'mineral-y' than others which we tried to decipher through the information available in a langage we barely understood. Lee believes it was talking about an egg smell and therefore sulphur in the water. Which, seemed pretty interesting had he not later witnessed a guy filling one of the pools with a 5kg bag of sea-salt during their closing ritual. The pools were all just below body temperature and fairly comfortable. The spa is pristine in condition despite being clearly built in a by-gone era for a much older generation. As part of the spa was a large sauna complex, that we weren't quite comfortable with experiencing at the time due to the 'traditionally nude' side of it. That did not mean there was no witnessing unexpected nudity in the changing rooms, however!
[Wine place - Weingut Scheidgen]
[Koblenz] Charlotte fell into a book shop and saw that Germany has a LOT of sprayed edge books (spredges)
I have forgotten details of this part of the trip, but my thoughts and feelings were mostly of heat and tiredness due to a lot of driving, but, I was very intrigued by the nudity aspect of the sauna, but not yet brave enough to actually do it... yet.
I really found it funny when you said 'even the river goes the wrong way' before realising it was going North towards the Sea.
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