TRAINS and BOATS and PLANES

We recently returned from a couple of weeks in Europe. After hours on airplanes, a short ride on a train (after an exasperating ordeal trying to buy our tickets from a non-English speaking machine), we arrived in Cologne (Koln) Germany.

We spent our first full day on a boat, floating down the Rhine River. We sat out on the open air deck and took in all the beautiful scenery - first looking back at Cologne as we sailed away

We saw lots of beautiful scenery along the way -- castles, vineyards, quaint German towns

We went down the Rhine as far south as:

Does that sign say "Marietta, Georgia"??? Yes! But we were in Linz, Germany -- Marietta's "sister city" -- where there was a fun festival going on (I think they had a festival of some sort going on in every city we visited). We had fun poking around in shops, eating yummy sausages and watching some of the entertainment -- when we left to get back to our boat, we were followed by an entire marching band! OOM, PAH, PAH!!!! Really, they followed us down several streets, through a tunnel, through a park, down the pier and just when we thought we would never lose them, they got on the boat docked right next to ours - whew! (Note the little guy in the front, an apprentice drummer!)

I'll be posting more about the rest of our trip, for anyone interested, check back every few days. But for now, I'll end this post with a tribute to that great, sweet, cool treat, ICE CREAM. Germans love it apparently, there are ice cream shops everywhere, and I often saw people eating just ice cream during their lunch hour from work. Here, apparently, some GERMAN GIANT dropped his luscious cone -- how very sad.