We’ve spent the past few days in a small town in Germany, Ober-Ramstadt. This was a must-stop on our journey, as this is where Ryan’s family is from and where some family-friends still call home.

Connecting from Frankfurt, we arrived late in the afternoon and spent the first day getting settled and Becca got to know our host, Evi. It only took 30 minutes before we were eating huge slices of cake with tea and feeling right at home. Evi is the most unbelievably kind and generous hostess, making us feasts for every meal and suggesting sightseeing day trips each day (and taking us there)! We love spending time with her and exploring Germany with her as an excellent guide.

Ryan has been pretty sick since we left Amsterdam, so having a home base and lots of down time has been great for him to get better more quickly. Evi made him get better tea every morning and it seems to be working.

The first full day we spent the morning doing laundry (woohoo)! This was the first time we could do laundry in a machine rather than just in the sink. It is easy to take for granted the luxury of clean clothes, but we definately will not after this trip!

After all of our clothes had been washed we headed to Darmstadt, a neighoring town with lots of history. We enjoyed seeing some beautiful buildings including a Russian church and a wedding tower which we climbed to the top of to see stunning views of the town and surounding areas. Evi was our guide, pointing out all of the buildings and telling us the history of them all.

After this little tour, we drove to the main square of Darmstadt and wandered around until we found an ice cream shop that had a beautiful back patio with overhanging vines providing the perfect amount of shade cover (it was a really hot day). We both tried to decipher the over 150 options for ice-cream sundaes, affogatos and crazy specials we had never seen before. After 10 minutes we were both confident in our choices, believing them to be small portions, only to have giant bowls of ice cream show up in front of us! Never in our lives have we had such massive amounts of ice cream, but we did finish all of it!

After entering a food coma, we headed back to the car and returned home for the World Cup game that night. Ryan enjoyed having a tv and a consistant place he knew he could watch the games from.

The next day we woke up a bit earlier to drive to Heidelberg. We started at the castle, exploring the grounds and walking through an interesting museum on medicine. The views from the castle were unreal, so stunning!

On top of that, no castle would be complete without somewhere to store all of their wine, and inside of the castle is one of the largest barrels which actually held wine at one point, measuring at over 270,000 liters!

It was easy to spot all of the American tourists in Heidelberg, as everyone was carrying flags and wearing red, white and blue to celebrate the 4th. We also happened to be wearing red, white, and blue outfits (although more subtle than the other tourists we saw). We didn’t mean to wear them, but maybe we are subconsciously more patriotic than we even knew.
We spent a few hours at the castle before heading into the town for lunch. We found a small museum cafe by a fountain that served excellent pizza and enjoyed each other’s company as well as the good food! Right as we were finishing our food a few rain drops began to fall and all of the people surrounding us began to scatter. We quickly finished our food and the rain cleared up before we headed out to explore the main street in Heidelberg.

We enjoyed the small shops and decided to head back to the car right before the rain started again, and this time it was not a small sprinkle. The rain started pouring down, accompanied by thunder and lightning and we ran for cover. We were caught off guard as rain wasn’t predicted in the forecast until the next day and it had been 85 degrees prior to the rain storm. Luckily as Seattlites, we were mostly unphased, and honestly a little happy for a change in the consistently hot weather up until that point.

The next day we treated ourselves by sleeping in a bit before setting off along the Rhein. Admiring the many castles which line on either side of the river. Our first stop was at Rüdesheim am Rhein, walking down the streets where the shops and restaurants were clearly preparing for hoards of tourists.

We grabbed lunch in town before heading up to Niederwalddenkmal, a monument dedicated to the re-unification of Germany after the German-French war in 1871. We took in the views and tried to relax, despite being surrounded by elementary students on school trips.

Heading further up the Rhein, we got an excellent tour commentary from Evi, describing the history of the Loreley rock, the Mäuseturm and many more landmarks. Before turning around to head back to Ober-Ramstadt, we enjoyed some coffee and tea at a castle-turned-hotel. The caffeine was necessary for some of us (Becca) who kept falling asleep in the car.

On our final full-day here, we spent the morning getting everything in order, packing what we could, doing some laundry and starting to listen to The Historian audiobook in the garden (thanks Liz & Kevin!). We didn’t expect to go anywhere, rather just spend the day at home, but after lunch Evi suggested that we head into another town for dinner later in the evening. She also suggested that we take a nap before we left, and we did, for an hour and a half (oops).

After the unintentionally long nap we headed to Michelstadt and wandered around before settling in at a biergarten called Michelstädter Rathausbräu. Ryan got a meat sampler plate with some unbelievable chicken and Becca got a couscous bowl with various veggies and mango! We also shared a summer beer which was really tasty.

We spent the evening with Evi watching the World Cup as we did most nights and woke up much too early this morning to catch the train to Berlin. It was a sad goodbye to Evi, as we’ve had such a wonderful time spending almost a week with her, but we are sure that we will be back to visit sometime soon!