Contiki Craziness - Part 2

Day 2 - Amsterdam to St Goar, Germany

Wild Weather, Wine and Witches

After getting up nice and early for some breakfast we were allowed some free time to explore Amsterdam before heading off to St Goar. So we set off in the pouring rain and went to visit the Anne Frank House, the house was where her family hid during the time of Hitler as they were trying to escape prosecution from the Nazis. There's a book and movie about her struggle through this period.

The house was very eerie and everyone was really quiet, it was a sombre affair but quite interesting all the same. Anne lived in a space that was bigger than my apartment but it sure would have been a tight fit for eight people and living in one place for two years and without being allowed to leave wouldn't have been much of a life.

Amsterdam's wet weather forced us into buying some expensive umbrella's and KFC was our lunch followed by a bus ride to St Goar. St Goar is a nice sleepy village in the Rhine Valley and we had a very simple place to stay however it was one of the better places all the same. That night we had an optional excursion to go wine tasting and we all headed off 5 minutes down the street to the wine tasting.

On the way to our wine tasting tour we were told a story of a wicked witch who lived in one of the nearby houses. Then our tour guide stopped us and told us to look through a dim lit fence, lo and behold there was a statue of the witch ....Scary!

Once we made it to the underground cellar a lovely German man explained a few things to us about the vineyards in the Rhine Valley, they are on the hills and are sloped at a 60degree angle, so the harvesting equipment and people all have to be strapped in and lowered down on a pully system to harvest the grapes.

They are famous for their ice wine, ice wine can only be made if the grapes are frozen at <-10degrees for at least 8 days. So you can imagine how expensive it is. It was very sweet and is mainly used as a desert wine. The wine tasting was a very good experience and we'll all remember the German saying 'Vool zoom' or something to that effect :)

After spending much of the day cooped in the bus, it was time for a PARTY!!! The tour group all headed for the hotel bar following the wine tasting and it was a very late night for all. Two of the captains got into the drinking with some jager bombs, while the other two captains danced the night away. We all reved up the tour guide and learnt about the elusive kiwi guy. Aparently a nice kiwi guy is hard to find....