Saturday June 5th, 2004

I have yet to suffer a hang-over ... and I am very glad about that!! We breakfast at Gary's and then Tom and I pack our smaller suitcases and we all head out to Monica's Village for the weekend. From there, Tom and I will go to Amsterdam for a couple days.

Monica lives near the Ahr River which is home to many steep vineyards and lots of winerys. Here is a link to pics from there ... http://www.chezjag.net/altenahr/altenahr.html

We dropped off our bags at Monica's house and met her 6 Bearded Collies which live with her. Quite a troop! She has recently done a lot of remodeling of her house including a most impressive guest bathroom! She lives in the house her father built for her family when she was a little girl. From there we venture off into Wine Country on the train and do some wine tasting and take a nice long hike along the Ahr River ending up at a gasthouse and having lunch there. We take the train back to Monica's village and a couple hours later Gary and Monica take us to one of their favorite places for dinner. After dinner we play Kniffle (Yahtzee) and Monica and I kick the men's butts! Once seated at a table in Europe, it is your table for the night. People often take their time eating and drinking and bring games to play and drink some more. Very relaxing.

We walked back to Monica's where she served us dessert and Tom and I tried to figure out which dog was which. Monica warned us that the dogs would wake us up very early ... all of them barking and insisting on being fed and let outside. We assured her that, even though cats don't bark, they have their own way of being insistant in the morning ... so we would be okay.