After breakfast, we set out on the 5K version of the Auf Goethes Spuren year round volksmarch. It was a nice walk, mostly on the trails on the banks of the Main, with bridges, statues, and wildfowl to enjoy. The walk took us from the Goethe House to the north bank of the Main.
We used the Friedensbrücke bridge to cross the Main and saw this statue of a stevedore.
The control point (where we needed to validate our start cards) was supposed to be very near the Friedensbrücke bridge in a “variable location”; it’s a small wooden box about one meter off the ground. We couldn’t find it, so I took a photo of the location in the hope that they’ll accept it as proof of our walk.
We searched a little longer with no success and finally decided to resume the walk.
We crossed back to the north side of the Main on the Alte Brücke and paid our respects to Charlemagne.
We’d already walked well over 5km, so we put the walk on hold and broke for lunch at a Havanda, a Turkish Döner restaurant; it was quite tasty and pretty inexpensive.
Our next stop was the Palmengarten, a 150-year-old botanical garden. In the interest of time, we took the U-bahn instead of walking (Google said it was 13 minutes away by transit, 20 by car, and 30 by foot).
We were greeted by a couple of Chinese geese.
Late summer isn’t the best time to see flowers in a botanical garden, but the Palmengarten had its share of nice ones to enjoy. I’ll limit myself to three.
We didn’t quite walk through the entirety of the Palmengarten, but we didn’t miss much.
We took the U-Bahn back to the center of town and walked back to our hotel to rest briefly before joining our traveling group for a visit to the Rheingauer Weinfest. We had German snacks and Rheingau wines and chatted for a couple of hours before taking our leave and wandering back to the hotel for our final pre-cruise evening.