Alyna's Home

On Friday we picked Alyna up at the airport in Dusseldorf. We are so happy she is here.


We took her friend Suzanne with us so that if I needed to do business stuff with Dennis for Medica, Alyna would still have someone to hang out with. After picking Alyna up, we drove to the big convention center where the Medica conference is always held. Dennis came and helped us get train tickets so we could go into the city and then he headed into his day of business and work and the girls and I headed for our day of sight seeing, shopping and eating. We got into the center at about 9:30 so killed a little time drinking hot chocolate at Starbucks while we waited for stores to open and such. We spent a lot of time wandering the city, looking at the Christmas markets, the old buildings and statues and of course the stores.

(Although Alyna is actually sitting up in this picture, I liked it this way because I didn't get a good picture of her when jet lag finally
kicked in and everytime we sat down, she fell asleep. She was a trooper to go all day after having traveled for 24 hours.)

That evening, the girls and I stayed at Krienbaums while Dennis went with them to dinner. I could have gone also but I was so exhausted and the girls were all very tired so we were all asleep by 10:00.

Saturday morning we drove down to the Rhein River Valley. We went to St. Goar and the Reinfels castle. Here is a little information about it:

The castles which are today such an unmistakable feature of the Rhein landscape date back to the Middle Ages. Their founders were feudal overloards, who, so far from cherishing any romantic notions, built them with one simple aim in mind: to protect their lands from marauders and predatory neighbours.
Since Roman times the Rhein valley has been a line of communication of vital strategic importance. In the Middle Ages the German emperors used it for their frequent progresses into Italy, and rich merchants sent their goods to and fro along it. Obviously anyone owning a castle overlooking the valley was in a powerful position, since he was able to survey and regulate the flow of traffic across this particular territory and levy tolls on merchants. This accounts for the large number of castles along the Rhein from Mainz to Bonn, particularly in the narrow gorge connecting Bingen and Koblenz. Along this stretch of river, which has a length of only thirty-five miles, there are more castles than in any other river valley in the world.

Rheinfels Castle was built above St Goar in 1245 by Count Dieter von Katzenelbogen. Thanks to the Landgraves of Hesse, it underwent conversion in the 16th century into an impressive Renaissance mansion, and again in the 17th and 18th centuries into the most formidable fortress on the Rhein against which all enemy attacks failed. Not untill 1794 was Rheinfels captured by the French troops and blown up. But even in its destruction, the huge mass of ruins covering the top of the hill is still one of the most noteworthy sites along the Rhein.



We had a wonderful time and it was a fun area to see.