A typical German weekend

I have just had a fantastic weekend chilling out with my old flatmate Hamish, who has been living in London for the past 5 months, and decided to check out a bit of Germany before I left. After missing his flight on Friday night, I picked him up first thing Saturday morning, and although the weather wasn’t great, we walked into the centre of Wiesbaden and chilled out for the afternoon. Did a bit of window shopping, took him to the farmers market, to a nice beer garden beside a lake and got some Thai for lunch. Both feeling pretty knackered after all that effort :o) we headed home for a few hours nap, and went back into town for dinner to a new restaurant that’s just opened up, and then checked out a band playing at the local Irish Pub.

After a big sleep in, he got the grand tour, which I’m becoming quite the little expert at giving. We headed out to the Rheingau, a beautiful wine growing region running along the length of the Rhein River. I took him first to Schloss Johannisberg, a winery that’s been making wine for over 900 years, is famous for its Riesling, and has impressive views over the whole area. Then we carried on to the touristy little town of Rüdesheim, and I convinced him to take the cable car over the vines, up to Niederwalddenkmal, a huge monument designed to symbolize the re-establishment of the German Empire and Germany's unity was erected in the late 1870’s, which has fantastic views and I’ve wanted to check out since arriving here.

After getting the cable car back down and a stroll back through the small village we headed in the car up along the eastern side of the Rhine, past lots of castles and vineyards to Loreley, where a huge rock face marks the narrowest part of the river between Switzerland and the North Sea. A very strong current and rocks below the waterline have caused many boat accidents there and legend says, that a siren called "Loreley" bewitched the hearts of the sailors and when they looked up to the rock, their boat crashed and they sank. Since it was such a gorgeous day we walked to the infamous Loreley statue, jutting out into the river, and then headed to a very traditional Bavarian Beer garden, right in the middle of a forest close to Eltville, where we sat under the trees, chilling out and Hamish feasted on the biggest Wiener schnitzel I’ve ever seen.

It was such a relaxing weekend, with lots of eating and chatting and a bit of sightseeing thrown in. So now Hamish is back in London, I’m back at work and planning my last few weeks here. In other random news I've just found out I've had a whole lot of my photos featured, and I remembered that here are a few random photos of Wiesbaden I took before I went on my road trip and forgot to chuck in. So look after yourselves.