Food & the Mosel River Valley

First a little about our hotel room.  Uhm, it's a hotel room.  The end.

Okay, it's not that bad, but it does present some challenges.  While it is technically a "suite" there is only a half wall between the living room and bedroom.  Rosie sleeps in the living room.  She goes to bed realllly early at 6:30p and then we go into stealth mode.  Which is, generally speaking, not so stealth.  Every evening we try to talk quietly so as not to wake her, but inevitably we drop something, clang something, or just have to do normal people things like use and flush the toilet...which is practically in her crib!  But surprisingly, it's going pretty well.  We've definitely had our share of evenings where I shoot Mike a dirty look for being too loud (I never knew he was so clumsy), but she doesn't stir too often.

That being said, in addition to keeping Rosie sleeping we also need to keep food in our bellies.  Mike and I neither one do very well with eating out every night so we've come up with some cooking alternatives - there's no kitchen in our hotel room but there is at Mike's office, so this is what we do.

The making of black bean enchiladas - Mike's fav.

It starts with positioning the baby.  Play mat, check. Toys, check.  Begin!

Microwaving our sweet potatoes.  It's a convenient location next to the 'fridge, next to the stroller, next to the....closet.  'Very handy, never more than an arms reach away,' is probably how a real estate professional would spin the situation.

 Ingredients ready.  Desk doubles as prep station.

Why yes.  That's our sink I'm rinsing black beans in.  It's the same sink I wash my face and brush my teeth in.  Again, should you need to rinse beans and shave at the same time it's very convenient.

 The baby is rolling away...

One step closer to being done.  Oh, and check out my awesome pre-pay phone on the desk.  It took me forever to remember how to text on that thing.

 She's making her get away.

 *Pause*  Rosie had to take a nap so food prep had to stop.  Tried to make the most of it though and cut the onions on a cutting board on the floor in the bedroom side of the room.  :)

She woke up.  Prep complete!  Now I pass it off to Mike.  He fries and fills the tortillas on the stove at work, bakes it and brings it home at the end of his shift.  Dinner complete!

 And there's the food that Rosie eats...hmm...

She's 6 months old now and we couldn't have been more excited to start her on solid foods.  Like lots of new parents we read a TON about when, what and how to feed her.  I have some significant digestive concerns and a lot of the readings/studies we found suggest waiting a minimum of 6 months (if not more!) for solids in an effort to allow her digestive system to fully form so it doesn't attack itself thinking the solids are intruders.  With any luck Rosie will be able to avoid the problems I have altogether.

Additionally, everyone has asked if Rosie will be a vegetarian.  Indeed, she will be.  Hope you like beans, baby.  :)

 She likes the spoon!

 Avocado is our favorite, so we're certain it'll be Rosie's too.  

What a fun first food.

 ....or she hates it!  Bummer.  Well, we've given her lots of solid food options since I took these picks and as it turns out, solid foods aren't that much fun for any of us.  Rosie still has a serious gag reflex and tongue thrust so we're taking it slow and giving her days where we don't do solids.  While it's true we're excited for her to eat fun new things, it seems she's not quite ready.  We're going to see if she'll feed herself next time, solid but tiny bits of avocado.  A few friends have also suggested the mesh food teethers.  We'll give it all a try.

 Who needs solids?  Rosie thinks her Daddy looks like a tasty snack.

So Michael's schedule here is pretty great.  He works six, 12 hour shifts and then has three days off.  So for our first trip out and about we chose to drive the Mosel River Valley.  We were going to go to Kassel, but changed our minds.

Here's a quick map of our drive:

Our little Diva, ready for the trip.

Our first stop was Burg Arras above the town of Alf.  

It was built in the 900s, making it the oldest castle in the area.

It is incredibly green here.  Crazy green.

There are literally places we go that look like they've been photoshop'd in person.  hahaha!

Silly Rosie...

You can see the road we drove in on down below.  Really gorgeous drive.

Apparently this castle is also a hotel.  So if you want to stay, book ahead of time!

The German word for Tower is Turm.  I hate seeing signs with arrows pointing to the Turm.  The combo of tight winding stair cases with towering height just doesn't work for me.  I made it halfway up this one before I literally started shaking with fear.  :(  I encountered the same problem when we did our last trip through Europe with my brother, Kyle.  Mike and Rosie continued up, up, up and I headed back down.  Then I felt guilty, thinking one day Rosie would know I was scared and would likely follow suite.  So I powered back up the Turm, head down with one foot in front of the other and put on my best smile for a pic.  Thanks Rosie.  The view was brief, but gorgeous.  Mike was as surprised by my return as I was.

On our way to the next stop we ate at this fantastic Italian Pizzeria.  One thing is true for certain.  EVERYONE loves a baby.  We have so many people ooooh and ahhhh Rosie.  They don't care that we can't understand one another, because we can all understand smiles and silly face attempts in an effort to elicit a baby smile or giggle.  It's sweet and nice to know it's a language everyone speaks.  There were lots of kind people speaking the baby language at the pizza place.  Nice memory.  The pic below is the view from the restaurant.

I tried to take some pics from the car while driving.  They turned out pretty good!

All along the hillsides are vineyards...one after another.  It's amazing.  

In order to manage the fields and fields of crop, these crazy roller coaster looking rides are set up on railways all up and down the hillsides.  They look so rickety!

We saw this beautiful home overlooking the Mosel.  Michael was sweet and said he'd buy it for me one day.  I snapped a quick pic so I could hold him to it later in life.

Upon closer inspection of the pics after we arrived home I realized, uhm, this beautiful home is also a "gentleman's" club.  GAH!  Nice Mike, nice.  Stay classy, Haus "Moselblick".

Moving right along...more pics along the Mosel.

We stopped in Cochem for some shopping.  Loved this city.

And then it was off to search for Burg Eltz.  It's a GIANT castle so you'd think it wouldn't be hard to find.  Unfortunately, everything in the area is named after the castle.  I doctored the pic below, but that's seriously how we felt. 

We made it eventually!  These trees were amazing.  It felt like they went on forever.

Here it is!
According to the Steve Ricks guide, thanks to smart diplomacy and clever marriages, Burg Eltz avoided wars and was never destroyed, remaining in the Eltz family for eight centuries.  The castle is furnished throughout basically as it was 500 years ago.  There's still a Prince living there today!

Here's a Rick Steves tour video that basically shows our whole trip down the Mosel.

This last weekend we saw good friends and celebrated my first Mother's Day.  

More pics to come from that!