Pardon My French

It is 03:42 here and I am gonna blog before everybody else in Europe wakes-up and the WiFi slows down. I looked at my phone to see how the Cardinals did last night and they are tied 3 - 3 in the seventh inning because, back home, it is still yesterday (last night). So, now I am listening to the Cardinals game and, just as I typed that the Cardinals go ahead 4 - 3 with a Yadier Molina home run!

We spent almost the entire day in Rudesheim yesterday. In fact, we are still on the Rhine river in Rudesheim. We will be leaving here at 06:45 heading for Brodenbach and then onto Cochem. Yesterday we got to visit the wheelhouse of the ship and meet the captains. Of course, they were both tall and nice and good looking. Talk about having doppelgangers - we looked like triplets. I cannot believe we are going to visit a castle- again! This time it is Reichsburg Castle. Then, after all of that, we will have our farewell dinner before we head-off to Paris for a couple of days. I cannot wait; we all know that the French love Americans...NOT! I hear that they believe they are culturally superior to everyone in the world. I am going with an open mind and an open heart but I really hope they are not as rude as people say. I have seen a lot of, what I consider, rudeness by Americans over these past eight days but I know to take them on an individual, case-by-case basis. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by what I discover. I am always very polite and courteous almost always until provoked so I consider myself the perfect test subject. I hope to find out what "pardon my French" really means.

This just in - Cardinals won! But many of you knew that already last night which will be here some time today. How in the heck did H. G. Wells do this?

Speaking of the French we toured a German winery / vineyard yesterday. You may ask - how could visiting Schloss Johannisberg castle / vineyard  make you say "speaking of the French?" In 1803 Emperor Napoleon owned the castle / vineyard but the weather turned bad and he had several bad seasons. The property was transferred to the emperor of Austria in 1815 and then became the best century for wine in this region. Karma and wine must be linked in the cosmos. Maybe rudeness brings-on bad karma?

Blogging about royalty makes me think about how we have been treated on this trip. We have been given the royal treatment the entire time. I have never, ever, ever, had by bottom pampered this much. That is mainly because, when I wore diapers, they still had the cloth kind and Pampers weren't invented yet and Velcro was not a household name unless you were a cowboy (though I think they called them burrs).

  I'd go on the road to anywhere with the travelling partner I have 

My feet kind of ached last night from walking on all of the cobblestone streets for the past week. Yesterday, we walked almost 18,000 steps (17, 982 to be precise). I feel right as rain again this morning and I am ready to command more stones of cobble today. I have said it before but it bares repeating - I am having the literal time of my life and I have the best travelling partner since Bob Hope. I will say that I am Bing since Jill is not much of a singer and she's taller than me unless I am wearing my Italian shoes and my crushable hat. Had I mentioned that it is crushable? These Germans and their technology. That makes me think - the cars we see most here are Porshe, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi, Skoda, Opel...

I will tell you about our trip to the Gutenberg Museum yesterday tomorrow is that makes sense and if I don't forget. I wish there were a way that I could print a reminder for myself.

Well, I believe I will have to end now and run like smoke n'oakem (or is that Cochem?). I have to shower and begin to think about packing because I think that may be a day-long project so I will cut-it-down into three or four smaller projects. Have a great day- I know that is my plan. I will, except for unseen circumstances, blog tomorrow. TTTT...MIMG (Matt In Middle Germany)... aus (weidersehen). TA!