May 25 - Rudesheim & Rheingau

That Sunday was a glorious day, sunny and warm. We had breakfast at Das Boot-- fruits and breads, homemade jam, cheese and sliced meats. Delicious tea for me, too-strong coffee for my husband. (He will not miss the coffee in Germany, and can't wait to taste "real" coffee again.)

We drive along the Rhine once again, still going towards Frankfurt, and we see castle after castle tucked up into the mountains. We stopped at one called the Schonburg, which is a hotel. An actual castle that they have renovated into hotel rooms with private baths. We looked around the grounds, and the rooms, and vow to stay at this castle when we come back to Germany. Before this trip was half over, we both knew we wanted to come back again.

At one point during our drive, we have to take a ferry across the Rhine. The river is wide at this point, and there's a small castle on a tiny island near the other side of the river. My husband is excited about the ferry ride and he stands outside the car and takes pictures. I stay inside the car and keep my eye on the little castle, hoping to forget that the car is on a boat and we're in the middle of the Rhine. GPS Greta is silent for the ferry ride, happy that we're following her directions.

We stopped for lunch in the prettiest of towns... Rudesheim. We love it here. So many beautiful cafes and shops, winding streets that have no cars, everyone walking and smiling and shopping and just happy to be in that sweet village. We had lunch there in an outdoor cafe, then went to the Music Box Museum (Siegfried's Mechanisches Musikkabinett) for a tour. The museum has the largest collection of music boxes in Germany. Every sort of music box and calliope you can imagine... big and small, simple and ornate, wood, gold, silver... we were awestruck by this magnificent collection. And when they let the music play... the sounds and the songs just took our breath away. We truly didn't want to leave that magical building. I bought postcards of the town, the museum.... and my stack of postcards is now over seven inches thick. This is a town that needs a longer visit, at least another full day, but we have to be on our way to Frankfurt. Next time we come to Germany, we have to spend more time in Rudesheim.

Our last stop was the Kloster Eberback, in Rheingau. This is a centuries-old monastery which still makes and sells wines. The grounds are beautiful, the monastery is larger than we expected. We tour the rooms and the cloisters, and we hear singing. We continue walking and follow the music and the singing, which gets louder as we get closer. In the largest part of the cloisters, there is a forty-piece orchestra set up, and singers are on the stage practicing their operatic performances for the "Opera Classica Europa" which will be presented that night. Tickets are sold out for the evening performance, but anyone on the grounds of the cloisters that day can watch and listen to the rehearsals. We quietly take seats and stay there for almost an hour. The music is so beautiful that it brings tears to our eyes. Some of the performers were from Spain, Italy, NY's Metropolitan Opera, Germany, and South America. My husband and I look at one another and we can hardly believe that we have stumbled upon this rehearsal.

Between the Music Box Museum and the cloisters, our last full day in Germany is better than we could have imagined.