My family and I were blessed to be able to do a vacation to several countries along the Rhine when we did a river cruise last week. Over the next few Travel Tuesdays I’m going to share some stories about our adventures and photos of what we saw. For starters, we landed in Frankfurt in the morning and after dropping off our bags, walked all around to explore the sights. We started off with a visit to the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German author, artist, and statesman. Seeing the home gave us an idea of how the well-connected lived in the 1800s and there was a nice museum with artwork attached to the home. After, we wandered through some shopping areas and also through a weekly farmer’s market. The market was filled with amazing produce and quite a few food, wine, and beer stands. It was so crowded, but we didn’t linger for long since we had to get back and get ready for our first ever visit to an Oktoberfest celebration. It was actually the first night of Oktoberfest in Frankfurt and because of that, everyone was dressed in traditional clothing. We tried our best to fit in and think we did an admirably job. What do you think? Oktoberfest was a blast. Lots of good food, namely some fantastic sausages, pretzels, mustard, spaetzle, and dumplings. We also had excellent beer, namely some wheat beer and lagers. Finally, the music and dancing! So much fun. Surprisingly a friend advised that two unexpected songs — Sweet Caroline and Country Roads by John Denver — are staples at German Oktoberfest celebrations. We had a lovely time that night. The next day we did some more exploring around Frankfurt before it was time to board the boat for our cruise up the Rhine. I’ll share more photos from the next leg of the trip next week!