The photos in this update are in reverse chronological order. Paul dropped me off at the airport around 2PM in Washington, DC. I spent about 27 hours waiting to board a flight, as I was flying standby. Once I got to Frankfurt, Germany, I expected to have trouble meeting up with Liz since we had planned to meet at the campground (campingplatz) the day before. Luckily, we were both running a day late because she had missed her train from Copenhagen to Frankfurt.

The campground we stayed at was nice. It had these ducks walking all around it. There is also some tree here that has these floating seed things. When the wind blows they start flying around everywhere. It looks like snow and is very pretty, especially at sunset. We camped in Frankfurt for a couple of days because Liz had to buy a bike, and we had various other things to do like buying a camping stove. Unfortunately, we didn´t get to see too much of Frankfurt because we were so busy while we were there and once we had finished everthing we needed to we felt like we had spent too many days there already. It´s a pretty cool town though. It´s fairly affluent, but everyone has vegetable gardens and they seem to ride their bikes everywhere. There are bike trails throughout the town and people are very friendly to bikers. Often, you even see very old people out riding their bikes.

From Frankfurt, we took the Main river heading West. The path along the river didn´t stay right along the river the whole way as parts of the river were rather industrial and unpleasant to bike through. I have a lot of pictures posted below of the bike ride. It was only about 36 miles from Frankfurt to Mainz (which is where the Main river intersects the Rhine) so we made it there in the first day. We probably could have gone farther, but we got a late start and we went at a pretty leisurely pace, stopping to take pictures and asking for directions. I think it is important to point out that we have no map of this area. We´ve basically been just asking for directions and following signs. There are these long bike highways everywhere and they are well marked. There are lots of people riding on them and you can tell that a lot of people use them as transportation between towns rather than for exercise.

We got into Mainz yesterday and we watched the sunset from the bridge over the Rhine and drank beer. I have some pictures below. Today we are going to explore the city. Speaking of which, I´d better end this post.






Some awesome graffitti under the bridge that crosses the Rhine.




















The bridge crossing the Rhine (from which we took most of the water photos)














Liz on the bridge.











oooooh, pretty.


















down the Rhine.













more graffitti under the bridge.











































drinking beer on the Rhine.



























An awesome apartment complex on the Rhine.











dinner.














Tired after riding.













Same.













After we stopped for lunch, we hit the road again.














Neu campingplatz!





























How the ficken are we gonna fit all this shizer in our bags?








































A cool looking grain that we saw everwhere.















Biking through a vineyard.












Cooking dinner.


















Getting ready to ride.








A cool kids bike chained up at the U-bahn.









Liz´s new bike (fahrrad).














Stopping for a wine break along the river.


















Would you like some expensive coffee?














Eating breakfast in the campingplatz.