Any party will do

The forecast for Monday and Tuesday is not great, so we decided today should be a riding day.

Just south of Koblenz, there is a river that empties into the Rhine -- the Lahn.  There is a bike trail that goes along that river (and, I suspect along almost every other river in Germany), heading east.  A bicycle friendly bridge took us to the east side of the Rhine and we headed south.  At Lahnstein the route proceeded east along a very lazy river.  There were several little locks in the 27 kms we travelled   to Nassau, sometimes directly along the river, other times through a Sunday-closed town, or on a tree-canopied path through the woods.

We arrived in Nassau to discover it was the 100 anniversary of some market feast we had never heard of, but any party will do.  This was what we had hoped for yesterday in Urmitz, but it was unexpected today.  There were little tents selling everything from clothing (I think all of Germany needs neck scarves) to brushes I had no idea there were so many shapes, sizes and varieties), to grinding stones (Ian sucked in), to kitchen gadgets (my weakness), to 1/2 meter sausages in buns, etc, etc.  The picture today gives a little bit of the flavour of this well-attended festival.  Kids were doing rides and eating zuker watte (cotton candy) just like at Rockton fair.

But unlike Rockton, the regional train station has at least one train every hour back to Koblenz and though there were only 3 cars, 2 of them accepted bicycles and we were back at the Hbf by 5 pm.  Unfortunately, but nicely, most of the town is closed on Sunday.  We managed a couple of buns and a donair, so no problems.