the rest of our trip + James-o bday

Well I guess it's time to wrap up our trip on here! Our last day in Rothenburg we walked around the medieval town wall that surrounds the city. We did some much needed laundry and then headed out on some more trains for Bacharach. We got in a little later than we expected due to some delays, so we went straight to dinner at this wonderful old rustic home called Altes Haus. We enjoyed an incredible dinner + dessert. It was really really cold out, so we opted out of the town walk for the time being and retreated back to the hotel. The next day we headed out bright and early for a Rhine river cruise. It was such a beautiful day, but very chilly! We wanted to sit on the sun deck of the boat in order to be able to see both sides of the river easily, but we had to retreat below a few times because it was so brisk. We saw so many incredible castles built into the hillside and lots of little towns. It is hard to imagine having to stop at all the castles in order to pay a toll to pass through. There was even a castle built in the middle of the river!

We stopped at a small town named St. Goar. After a hot chocolate and pastry pit stop, we headed up a vineyard trail to the Rhinefels castle. What a neat place! It was so neat to imagine the old markets, cellars, and butcher shops. We even went down into these old tunnels that were used to trap people trying to invade the castle. it was quite scary down there because we didn't really have a decent map and there were lots of little dead end tunnels that used to store gun powder. The tunnels were never more than 3 feet tall so we had to crouch and crawl through the pitch black tunnels. We did have my trusty head lamp though. We ended up making it out and we were glad we did it! After our castle exploration, we headed back down into town and ate a picnic at the waterfront town before catching a train back to Bacharach.

We grabbed our bags from the tourist information office and then headed out to catch a train to Frankfurt. We ended up sitting by this guy who works at the airport. He spoke excellent english, so it was really interesting to learn about the scenery we were passing. He also helped us find the shuttle bus stop at the airport so we could take the free shuttle bus to the airport instead of paying for a cab. We didn't explore frankfurt at all, we were just too tired. We grabbed some dinner and then watched some tv for a little while.

Now we are back home!! It has been quite the whirlwind! On Sunday we celebrated James' 1st birthday. Ben & I dressed up as James' birthday table. It was a wonderful time with great people, food and fun. Of course it was also fun to beat Jessie & Mark in hand and foot a couple times ;) The fall celebrations are not over yet- this weekend is Mark's birthday!

and to finish my post- I leave you with my current favorite wedding shapshot "gettin jiggy with it"