Hotel zum Baren, Rudesheim, Germany

Wow. I am in Germany. In the Rhein valley where Hildegard formed her abbey after leaving Rupertsburg.

Hildegard's Abbey is 10 minutes up the hillside. Ann (Machmeier) & I may head to Mass there tomorrow morning for Palm Sunday services. We can hardly believe we are here! We drove here from Paris this morning, after flying all night from Minneapolis. The 5 HR journey took almost 7, but we stopped in Reims to walk through the cathedral there, which was fabulous, then journeyed through France in our BMW Series 1, swinging north to Rudesheim near Mainz. We will be here until Monday, then it's off to Hohenschwangau in Bavaria for 2 days.

We've been basically awake for 24 hours and are trying to stay awake for another hour or so before we hit the hay. It's 6:30pm here. We are sipping the local brandy and blogging this evening. We had a lovely dinner of white asparagus, ham and boiled potatoes, a glass of Spaetlasse for me and two Rudesheimer brandy-kaffe's for dessert. As we strolled through the Old Town (Alte Stadt), we found a purveyor of the brandy and each bought a bottle. Mine was opened upon arriving back to the rooms. :-)

My German is slowly coming back to me as I order food and listen to locals. I am remembering to say "danke" and "ja" and "zwei" and "bitte" and all manner of things that my brain is dredging up. It's fun when it works!

The bed god is singing his siren song and luring me to the feathers. I think it's time for me to crawl under the down comforter and rest a peaceful sleep.

If you'd be so kind as to leave a message, I'll know someone is reading this!

Ciao for now!
~N