September 1 - The Main Meets the Rhine

Tuesday - Frankfurt to Mainz
This Euro mural covered one whole wall of our hotel room. That's a lot more color than most rooms have.

This is one building that survived WWII but not much else did. Frankfurt is a very modern looking city.

Even the industrial areas are colorful.

One last time across the Main River.

Heavy industry to our right.....

......country village to our left......

.......and a Native American camp just down the road!

Doug thought this sign was all about him. We really like REWE markets because they usually have a bakery with sandwiches, good coffee, and sweet treats up front with tables to sit and enjoy them. (in Okriftel)

This group is from the Philadelphia area on one of the cruise boats on the Main River. The boat provided the bikes for them to ride from Frankfurt to Mainz today.  Some of their group stayed on the boat because of predicted showers but it has been a delightful morning. We passed each other a couple of times by the time we got to Mainz.

Mainz ahead

The official end of the Main Bike Route. Now we join the Rhine Bike Route which is also EuroVelo Route 15.

This has been such a nice route that we are sorry to see it come to an end.

We talked to Bob several times because he was acting as the sweep for the Philadelphia group. He also leads bike tours in Pennsylvania. He even invited us to their boat for a beer if we happened to be in their docking area.

The rain did show up 15 minutes after we checked into our hotel. 

Mainz Cathedral

Easier to get a picture at this scale!

Brother Eric had recommended that we do the Gutenberg Museum which seemed like a good option for the afternoon.

These plates are in the gift shop/children's hands-on area.

The adult version. This is the only picture because you aren't allowed to take pictures of the exhibits. There are a lot of very old books including several versions of the original Gutenberg Bible, which were very impressive. There is also a room with commercial printing machines from Gutenberg's time to the present day, a section on Asian typesetting, and one on the Islamic interaction with mechanical printing. Islamic hand printers successfully stymied the introduction of mass produced printing for a long time.

Dancing after the rain.

Umbrella jousting....not sanctioned by their adults.

Gutenberg again though the museum exhibit said that, even though there are several different paintings and statues, they really don't know what he looked like.

We stopped for ice cream afterwards and could hear this group making music and speeches down the street. It was all in German so we could only hear the passion behind the words.

The group was a political party and they were promoting World Peace Day.

They were an interesting group to chat with, which we did until it was time for dinner.