Today is a down day for us and we need it! The room was comfortable last night and we both sleep well. Dick is up and working on the Blog…we are way behind…by 8:00AM. Carolyn sleeps in until after 9:00AM. It is nice not to have to pack up!
The hotel provides a very nice spread for breakfast and we are one of the last guests into the dining room. It turns out that we have an assigned table for our stay with our name as “FAMALIE NEAL” written on a ceramic place card. We find that a nice, classy touch. The buffet offerings include fried and scrambled eggs, croissants, hard rolls, several kinds of yogurt, bacon, jams, a tea caddie, coffee, etc. They also have riesemilch or, as we call it at home, sweet rice or sticky rice.
We talk to one of the owners, Oliver Meyer, about things to do. We take the hotel car down to the center of Cochem and explore there. As we have said, this is a three-day weekend in Germany. It is actually a Catholic Church holiday but nobody seems to know just what it is when asked about it. The town of Cochem is a German tourist destination at the best of times and this weekend, it is crawling with people.
Every parking place is full and the motorcycle crowd is pulling in by the tens. There must be several hundred motorcycles parked in the areas through which we walk. While quaint and pretty, the village is given over to the tourist trade and offers nothing that we have not seen too much of already. Again there are no shops with the nice handmade things we have found in Germany in the past but we do treat ourselves to some delious chocolate candy and some pastries! 
We cannot seem to catch a taxi on the street, so we go to the information office and they call one for us. There is an antique car show in the parking lot
so we check that out while we wait for the taxi to come.
€8 later, we arrive back at our hotel. We spend the afternoon, reading, working on the blog and enjoying our balcony view of Cochem and the Mosel River Valley. 
About 5:00PM we go for a short drive up river toward Trier.
We had thought we would rent some bikes this afternoon, but that did not happen. All the restaurants are full or people and we are glad we are not looking for a place to eat. The river drive is very nice this time of day.
Dinner is included in today’s room cost and we go down about 8:30PM. The sun is still up and it seems like 6:00PM in Texas in the middle of the summer. While good and well presented, the food does not compare to what we had last night but we enjoy a quiet meal and share a bottle of local Gewürztraminer. We had pre-ordered a pastry wrapped salmon dish, however we are not fans of turnips and they were on the plate as a vegetable and the leaves were in the salmon wrap. It seems to us that most German meals are white! White asparagus, white potatoes, white turnips, white sauce and almost white pastry wrapped salmon. This all white type of plate has been the standard for several meals. Back in the room, Carolyn reviews pictures from the last few days until the small hours of the morning while Dick, as usual, crashes at a reasonable time.
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