We were still navigating holidays in COVID circumstances and had originally planned to keep it small with a landing day in Munich followed by some Austrian explanations. Then came the text from Chika — a Google Map url somewhere towards the North Western areas of Germany. I was in Munich, Chika and they boys were in Berlin, so we decided to meet in Frankfurt. Off we went to Hiedelburg, home of the oldest University in Germany (1386) and the Hiedelburg Castle. We visited both (hiking up to the Castle and then lunching a the student canteen after our original mountain top terrace was closed until evening). We spent the evening in Rüdesheim am Rhein, famous for Riesling wines which we enjoyed along with a lovely whole duck stuffed with figs and dates (not to mention their famous flaming coffee). The next morning, we strolled through the old town and took a gondola ride to rise above the morning fog.

Afterwards we drove up the Rhine river to spot the many castles along the way, with a short stop off for bobsled riding before reaching Koblenz (which has an amazingly large number of ice cream spots for such a small old town, and the one which we tried — eGeLoSIa Laden — was extremely good). We rode the gondola up to the fort for a beautiful view of the city, but then needed to move on to catch our dinner reservations (and shopping) in Dusseldorf.

The next morning we needed to head back to Berlin, but decided the day should bring something to the table and settled on stopping for lunch in Hannover. While expectations were somewhat low for this commercial/EXPO town, we did discover a very nice area around the opera (who knew) and had a 5 star meal at MARY´s Restaurant where our children managed to survive for almost 2 hours.

Was too short and too lovely a trip, so will need to head back again in the near future.

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