Mainz Trip & Wine Fest

Mainz Trip & Wine Fest

Saturday morning we headed to Mainz, which is a little over an hour from where we live. It is right on the Rhine River and in the middle of wine country. (It seems like most of Germany I have seen so far is wine country). There were some sightseeing things to check out and also a big wine festival I wanted to go to. Mainz isn't as old as Trier but it's close and it's claim to fame is that Johannes Gutenberg was born there. Gutenberg is the creator of the first mechanical printing press. There is a museum there dedicated to him but we didn't go see it. Instead we wandered through the city which was very busy.

There was a huge farmer's market going on where you could buy just about anything you'd want. There were fresh flowers, fresh herbs and spices, fresh fruits and veggies, cheese vendors, meat vendors, bakery goods, jellies and sauces...you name it. It was like a temporary grocery store in the center of town. The first stop we made was at the Mainz Cathedral. You'd think all these churches would start to get old and look the same after a while, but they don't. Each one has different history and details to admire. We passed another church that we didn't go into on our way to Old Town Mainz. Some of the homes standing in the Old City date back to the 15th Century and are true half timbered style houses. One of the houses we saw was built in 1450! The houses are absolutely gorgeous. After visiting one last church, St. Stephens, we started to the wine festival.

We walked, and walked, and walked and FINALLY made it to the wine festival being held at a huge city park in Mainz. When we got there is was a lot emptier than we expected it to be and the vendors seemed to still be setting up. I asked some of the workers and they said that it didn't start for about another hour. I guess it's more of a night time thing than an all day event. So we walked to a grassy area of the park and let Colin play and go nuts out of his stroller for a while. He had fun playing with leaves and walking between Shelby and I. He still refuses to take a step without a hold one someone's finger. We even try to trick him and sneak our finger out of his grip while the other distracts him but he catches us every times and sits instantly. Turd.

After some play time we headed back to the wine fest area and started sampling. We thought it would be more like wine tasting where you buy little samples of the wine. We were wrong. The vendors all sold regular sized glasses of wine. A glass of wine ranged anywhere from 1 - 3 Euro, which is about $1.40 - $4...so it was pretty cheap. They also served all the wine in glass wine glasses that belonged to the booth, so you couldn't get your big old glass and then move on to the next place, you had to stop and hang out in their little table area and drink it so you could turn the glass back in. Now if we had all night this would have been dandy. However, we were hoping to sample wine and buy what we liked. When you have to drink a whole glass of every wine you try you get pretty drunk pretty quick! It was getting to be a long day for Colin and we still had to drive home so thankfully we found a really good wine and bought a few bottles of it and started to head out. Of course on the way out of the park I found another booth or two that had something that looked delicious and I had to make a few more stops before we really headed home. Now we know for next year how it works and we can plan to just stay overnight in Mainz.
Mainz was a very pretty place and worth checking out again, I hear they have a huge Christmas Market there so we will visit there again soon.