We Discover Monschau | Trip to Europe

One of the first things we did on that Monday in Gemünd was to go shopping for breakfast food. At least I think we went shopping first thing, but I also think we might have done this the night before. At any rate, we entered the local supermarket. Just as we had discovered in Strasbourg, the supermarkets are very much the equal of medium-sized supermarkets in the U.S.A. However, one sees some very different and interesting products in Europe, right alongside the more familiar ones. For example, there are cheeses and breads you don't see in America. We ended up getting lots of breakfast stuff, yoghurt, Brötchen, juice, milk, coffee, hot chocolate, cheese, cold meat, and some snack stuff. For $7 a piece, we provided for five breakfasts.

After breakfast, we went down to the condo office, where they had a lot of interesting travel information. Tom talked to the clerk in German, while Vicki and I stood back and tried to follow what was going on. One thing we found out was that there was to be a bus tour of the Rhine on Thursday, and we definitely wanted to go on that. Also, I had been looking on the map for a possible interesting place around Gemünd/Schleiden. For some reason, I had identified the little village of Monschau as an interesting place. I didn't have a shred of information on it, but it seemed to be calling to me. I mentioned to Tom and Vicki that if they didn't have a better idea for the afternoon, this town of Monschau might be a good place to visit. They agreed.

The pictures below and those that will be shown for Wednesday do a good job of describing the charm of Monschau. It is just a few miles from the Belgian border, and is located in the "high fenn" region, which is marshland. In the spring, thousands of wild daffodils bloom there. Monshau itself is a town that snakes along a very curving river.

The Charm of Monschau | Trip to Europe

Created by Jim Andris, September 16, 2000.