Cologne 2 Unkel – August 13, 2015

We pack up and leave our beautiful room and head back to the train station where we are to pick up the rental car. There are other
people in line. How rude (ala Jar Jar Binks). It is a bit of a zoo at the Budget office. Other rental companies in the same office
have no one. The Budget line has 4 in line. It takes almost an hour to finally finish our transaction. We have a great conversation
with the agent at the desk. She is having trouble printing our documents. Then she says they are probably printing in India. Then
relates her experience getting a call from the help desk and her inability to understand what they are saying 🙂 It made us laugh.

We have a Smart4four. Cute little red and black one.

Technical difficulties with the GPS on my phone meant it took us a bit longer to get out of the city than we anticipated. We want to
avoid the Autobahn if possible. Just a gentle drive down the Rhine, that is what we want. Hahaha. We wiggle our way around, stop
for a bit at a park along the river. Sit on a bench and watch the traffic on the river. It is a very busy river.

Back in the car we decide on a destination. Unkel. Our little book says this town is famous for “Unkler Funkler” wine. Says it can
be tasted in the many wine bars in town. I think we need to taste it!

We drive into town looking for the Tourist Information office. We ask directions from a couple of locals and find our way there. It
is really not open, but they have sheets that tell you where the accommodation and restaurants are. There are many one way streets so we make a few circles before we finally find the main town parking. Off we go with our accommodation list to find a place to stay.

We find one place that was built in 1787 (almost 300 years!) that has a vacancy. It seems a bus tour of little old Germans has just arrived at the restaurant/bar. The hotel lady hurries us up to our room so that she can go and help in the bar. Lots of old Germans, lots with walkers have converged on this place. We head out to find a place for a beer that is a bit quieter.

We sit down at one of the wine bars and the lady that comes to serve us is one of the people we asked for directions.

The bus people have left and the town is VERY quiet now. We don’t know how they survive with this little traffic.

We have only traveled 58 Km from Cologne, but it was the slow way 🙂

This town is very quiet. It seems to depend on tourism, however many of the restaurants are closed.

We have noticed that English is less spoken outside of Cologne, very little here. We ordered dinner without knowing what would arrive. We tried a “phone a friend” to our daughter-inlaw Nicole, but the Facebook message didn’t go through.