Flowers, Rifles and Beer

Koblenz to Bonn to Neuss

Day 63 - Sunday - August 14
It was a very, very quiet morning.

Fortunately, it waited to start raining until we were already on the road. Breaking camp in the rain is never fun.

The marks on the wall are flood levels. The highest one is Dec. 1993, the flood that the cafe owner in Boppard told us about.

The flood marks are on the front wall of this crane erected in 1554 and used until 1911....just a few floods in its history.

River kilometer sign. The Rhein is 1230 kilometers long.

It looked like you could walk across the river on boats at one point there were so many going by at once.

Yep......raining again.

A handy tunnel under the railroad tracks make a fine "umbrella"

Happy as a clam......a wet clam but not soaked!

Catching a snack at a ferry landing.

We knew we were in the right place when this sign welcomed us to our home for the night in this small guest house in Bonn. There were only 8 rooms.

Day 64 - Monday - August 15
The rest of the morning ritual after breakfast..... loading our trusty steeds.

Can it really be blue sky??

This was our day for seeing the industrial might along the river.

And really big grapes!

Coming into Koln (Cologne)

Just Donna's kind of museum but it was closed on Mondays so she only got this taste of it.

Noah's Ark....must have landed here in the 1993 flood!

Need a wheel?

We've seen a lot of cathedrals by now, but this one has to be the tallest so far. We saw a postcard picture from the end of WWII. The church was the only thing left standing.

This is the other "short" half.

We traveled through miles of shipping containers while leaving Koln. It also took us 3 miles to go by a Ford Motor Company complex.

Miles of pavers today, too.

One of the more interesting houses we saw in this area.

Does he really have his sunglasses on?

Horse jumping course a naturale.

Just one of the four huge suspension bridges over this part of the Rhein, all of similar design.

Serendipity strikes again. Donna happened to look down a street we were crossing in Grimlinghousen and noticed a parade in progress a block away.

There is starting to be a pattern here......lots of fake rifles.

It is a Schutzenfest (Shooters festival), a tradition that has been carried on for 140 years in this town and longer in the area. They have a parade 4 evenings in a row. It is a warm up for the larger regional gathering in Neuss at the end of August.

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This is night 3 and the beer arrived in a very timely fashion when they took a break.

We stood out with our loaded bikes and these guys just surrounded us, informing us that the fun was just beginning and we shouldn't leave. As is often the case, the bikes were the ice-breaker.

They asked us about our trip and explained the parade to us. They also offered Doug beer 4 times in 5 minutes. Then they had to get "back to work" so they could really party later and we needed to find our home for the night which was still a couple of miles away in Neuss.