Hi Dee Dee : I am really enjoying your trip report! Since parts of the Rhine and Mosel Valley's are so fresh in my mind I can picture the settings and roads as plain as day.

My husband LOVED the autobahn. The fastest we went was 210 kph and it was plenty fast for me. We did get passed at times by cars going faster than that.

BTW, when you were in Beilstein, did you take the road up to the Waldelust? I am still trying to figure out what it was. I had climbed up to the Jewish Cemetary before dinner and wanted to show my husband (who had been napping whilst I looked around) where it was. I saw that a car had been outside the castle ruins so I knew a road went up there somehow. We tried to find it by driving back behind the village and ended up on a one lane road going up a very steep hill. It was past the cemetary and castle but high, high above it. It made me a little sick to look out my window as we went up. At the top,hidden in the woods was a park or some other site called "Waldelust" and it had a wooden gazebo and another wooden structure, a couple of tables and a wooden rail fence to keep you from falling down the hill. We looked down on the river and Beilstein and the castle from this vantage point. I am so glad we did not meet another car on this road!

Happy Cheesecake,

You beat us on Autobahn speed -- my husband says 200 km/hr was his top speed. Our Audi A3 TDI (turbo diesel injected) would have gone faster, but hubby says he was a bit nervous to take it faster with whole family in the car. Of course, our teens got the biggest kick out of the Autobahn. The cheerleaders in the backseat were hollering, "Oh come on, Dad, let's fly!" while I'm sitting white knuckled reminding him that our credit card CDW is void while he exceeds the posted speed! LOL!

To be truthful, there were large stretches of the Autobahn that were either too congested or road construction impeded the ability to really let loose on the speed.

I know which road you are referring to as we saw it also from the cemetary area, but, no, we did not drive up there. Everything about Beilstein was wonderful and for such a small village there was a surprising number of things to see and do.

Did you try the strawberries and spargel when you were there? What dates were you in the Rhine/Mosel?

Faina, Hang in there -- pics are on there way. I'll try to upload them later tonight and post the link. Thanks for the cute emoticons!!

Hi DeeDee:

We were there while you were typing up your report. Hubby went first, for work. I joined him a week later, on 7/2 and we left together on 7/10. I am so sorry to say that we missed the asparagas, which I love. Saw lots of fields of it gone to seed tho. I never got any strawberries either, but we saw plenty of stands by the side of the road. It never occured to me that they would be better or different. I wish I would have tried some!

We loved the area. I have daydreams of a trip to Switzerland now, but have the next two years of vacations pretty much planned out so maybe 2008.

I caught hubby at the BMW site tho, building a car and looking for info on the European delivery program so who knows......

It's ironic that you mention the European delivery for BMW. Just tonight, my husband and I were going through some papers, cleaning up clutter. Alot of these papers were trip pamphlets, etc. He had a whole packet of info from BMW on their Euro delivery program. He said he had sent away for it before our trip, but that it had arrived after our return! He DID throw it away, though. So...guess that means either no more European trips for awhile OR we'll go back, but no BMW!!