One of the tracks

Not a bad idea. Of course i'm sure they still get quite a workout.... 

The Vine-train

the steeper vineyards had these "vine trains" that had tracks that went up and through all the vines and allowed you to tend them and pick the grapes in places you wouldn't ordinarily be able to. 

A little idea of what the surrounding area was like. Plus another picture of Mike, which there aren't enough of :) 

Beautiful Burg Eltz

The castle from the other side. The inside was neat too, but it was just such a "real" feeling place as you wandered around the area. 

The next morning we left bright and early for Burg Eltz. We took an hour long hike through the woods from the nearest town, it was very enjoyable. This castle has never been destroyed, and it has been in the same family for 700 years. The family still lives here! A very idyllic setting for a castle, up on a hill in the middle of a valley, surrounded by trees, plains, and streams. I could easily imagine being a princess here. :) 

Our lovely balcony at the Hotel Haus Lippmann. We spent the rest of the afternoon here; writing postcards, reading, drinking Federweiser. One of the best days! This is room #4, it's the only one with a balcony, but it's the same price I think. 

We went up the hill on the OTHER side of town and ate lunch at the church up there. Another nice pretty view. Easier to get to than the Castle ruins the day before :) There's only one priest living here now, it used to be a full abbey. But Mike noticed that he does have satellite TV so I don't feel too sorry for him :) 

Hotel Haus Lippmann, heaven in Beilstein

We headed back to Beilstein to claim our room. The hotel is right on the river, and our room was in the pink building behind that tree. More pics of that later. A truly fantastic hotel. Nice big hallways, dark wood floors, old, quality antique furniture in the rooms....and a very friendly and helpful staff, all of which speak at least a little English. 

Zell and the Schwartz Katz

The village of Zell is famous for its "Schwartz Katz" (Black Cat) vineyards. The town mascot is even a black cat. We stopped at a Weinstube recommended by Rick Steve's (Franz Josef Weis) and we got to tour the cellars, seeing where the grapes were smushed, the sugar content measured, the fermentation vats, and the bottling equipment. Very interesting! These little hidden underground worlds. We learned a lot about wine making, and the different types of Reisling. And we learned what the ubiquitous "Federweiser" is: It's "young wine," and they basically drain it out of the fermentation vats in the autumn a little at a time. It tastes a bit like grape juice, but with a little kick, and it's full of yeasties and bubbles. Really interesting! Would have made a great gift but it doesn't last very long, even less time when it's not refrigerated, so it wasn't very practical. I enjoyed it a lot even if the yeast that settle to the bottom before you finish are kinda gross. And it does smell like um, something gross. We bought several bottles of wine here. 

The town of Cochem

Cochem wasn't nearly as crowded the next morning. It was a nice little city, with narrow streets crossing at strange angles, a nice mixture of cute unique shops and touristy crap. If we were going to stay in 1 city for a long time and make day trips out, this would be a nice one, because there are several restaurants, lots of bars, a decent amount of stuff to do in the evenings. 

They served the same terrible water that the castle restaurant served. It was in fact "still water," with no bubbles, but it just tasted like fizzy mineral water with the bubbles shaken out!! Gag. We called it Ass-Water.

After wandering around tasting wine, it was time to eat. And it was Mike's turn to choose. He quickly narrowed it down to the "Schnitzel Haus" with XXL schnitzels, or this place, which claims to be a "Schnitzel Paradies" with 15 different kinds of schnitzel. The big thumbs up did it for him, so we ate here. It wasn't bad, their fries were really good; I had schnitzel with broccoli and cheese, and Mike had Schnitzel Diabolo with some pepper sauce. We were both pretty happy.

No room at the inn

So I really liked Beilstein, and I had heard great things about one hotel there in my research. We stopped there for coffee and I asked if they happened to have any rooms available. Sadly, they did not, at least not for that night, but they did for the next night. I decided to make a reservation and planned to return the next day.

Somewhere along the way we realized that today was a national holiday in Germany, (German reunification day or something,) which we were hoping explained the masses of people everywhere. Mike did his best to make me feel better and assured me that it would not be that busy all week.

Since everyplace seemed so busy, we decided we should go back to Cochem to try and find a room, since it was the largest town. I got discouraged at the Tourist Information office because it seemed like all the available places were far away from the town center and not within walking distance. So I reached into my "research bag of tricks" and pulled out the name of a B&B recommended by someone on Fodors. They had space and we walked over there.

Mike had never stayed in a B&B before, and he was a bit taken aback by it. I think he thought it was "too familiar," like staying at someones grandparent's house. But the price was great, and the owners were extremely friendly, if quite monolingual. The husband walked me to our car and showed me the incredibly indirect, difficult, circuitous route back to the free spaces in front of their house. We relaxed a bit on the incredibly comfortable bed and set out to wander the streets of Cochem and find some wine and eventually some dinner.

And they have a beautifully located restaurant at the castle. We took our time, enjoyed the view, a nice lunch, and some terrible water.

A little snapshot of some of the castle ruins.

So the climb up to Burg Metternich from Beilstein rewards you with some really nice stunning views of the valley. You can see the patchwork quilt of vineyards on almost every inch of space that isn't taken up with a house.

Our first stop was supposed to be Cochem, the largest town on the Mosel, but it was soooo jam packed full of people it depressed me, so I told Mike to keep driving, south, to the tiny little village of Beilstein. It had an interesting history, of a long-standing lively Jewish community for hundreds of years, until WWII, and now there are no Jewish people in the town even today. There's a lovely Jewish cemetery which people come from Koblenz to care for. Anyway the town is sort of set into the hill, with steep winding streets that seem to disappear into the surrounding countryside. It's lovely, but TINY. There are about 180 people who live here (And they run about 35 different hotels and restaurants!) There's a large castle ruin that sits overlooking the city, and a large abbey that now only has 1 monk. And he's got satellite TV. :) Anyway, here's Carrie on one of the narrow streets of Beilstein.

DAY 3: THE MOSEL - COCHEM AND BEILSTEIN. We got up on Monday morning, said our goodbyes to the Boppard hotel owner (who gave us directions for a lovely scenic route over the hill to the Mosel), and enjoyed...a lovely scenic drive over the hill to the Mosel! The drive was through the forest, on winding roads, and then as you made your way down the other side of the hill, the Mosel valley appeared gradually through the trees. I was very impressed. The Mosel is a wind-ey-er river, and you get some really nice scenic views over the river bends, etc. The weather was a bit cloudy and overcast but blissfully rain-free again.

The Rhine's not quite as pretty at night. It's quite dark.

By the time we finished our dinner and ran around taking pictures of things that said "Assmann" and giggling, it was quite dark. We drove along back towards Boppard, when one of us realized that we were on the east side of the river and Boppard was on the west side of the river. And there are no bridges, only ferries. And we hadn't given any thought to when the ferries stopped running! Luckily, we came upon a ferry with cars on it a little south of Boppard, so we drove on at about 8:50. When we got to the other side, we looked at their sign and it said they ran until 9 p.m. Lucky us!! :)

Thus we have reached the end of our short stay on the Rhine. I would enjoy going back, I would like to visit St. Goar and Bacharach, and explore the ruins of Burg Rheinfels. But alas, it is time to go to the real gem, what I have been looking forward to, which is of course the Mosel.

all you can eat and then some

I decided to go for the "seafood plate." Um, that's a lot of food. And a big plate. Although the scallop on the left side, the mussel, the lobster, and the lemon slice were ceramic and part of the plate, it was still a LOT of food. I ate until I was full, but I felt bad, because when the waitress came to clear the dishes she looked at me with this sad disheartened look and said "it wasn't ok?" because it looked like I hadn't eaten anything!!

Zum Anker

So we ate here :) It was a great quirky restaurant called Zum Anker and it was decorated in this cute cluttery way with all sorts of seafaring relics and wine-related stuff. The whole ceiling was covered in grape leaves and these little colored lights. And the things to the right of Mike, in this picture, were these carvings from tree roots/branches with little men's faces carved into them. There must have been 40 of them!

No really, it's called Assmannshausen!

Here's an actual picture of a riverside hotel/restaurant in Assmannshausen (teehee!) I thought this place was beautiful but we didn't eat here because it was too hoity-toity and expensive.

The House of Assmann

To wrap up our driving tour of the Rhine, we decided we *had* to stop in Assmannshausen. I mean, how can you not?

The most classic "Rhine/Castle view"

Ok, Here is the view that typefies "The Rhine," of Burg Gutenfels and Burg Pfalz. Burg Pfalz just typefies the Rhine "robber-baron" river tax collecting classes, plopping itself right in the middle of the river. I was really looking forward to seeing this view.



But as we drove from the north, on the other side of the river, with me saying "ooh, the castle in the river is coming up!!" What do I see???

Aaargh!! Darned renovation. I mean I understand it must be done, or else everything would fall apart, but why did they have to do it during MY trip????? :(

Another picture from Kloster Eberbach

We drove further south to a town called Bingen, then crossed and drove away from the river to a Cistercian abbey named Kloster Eberbach. Set in the middle of nowhere, this was the site of filming of much of the movie The Name of the Rose. It's now secularized, and they make a popular wine. We arrived too late to do a full tour, but we were able to wander around and enjoy the grounds. I thought it would have been the perfect place to be a monk.

The Loreley

The fabled Lorelei rock. This is where the river is at it's narrowest and deepest. It was very difficult to pass, and many ships crashed here. The legend is that a beautiful maiden sat atop the rock, brushing her hair and singing, inadvertently luring sailors towards the rock to their demise.

"I do not know what haunts me,
What saddened my mind all day;
An age-old
tale confounds me,
A spell I cannot allay.
The air is cool and in
twilight
The Rhine's dark waters flow;
The peak of the mountain in
highlight
Reflects the evening glow.
There sits a lovely maiden
Above so wondrous fair,
With shining jewels laden,
She combs her
golden hair
It falls through her comb in a shower,
And over the valley
rings
A song of mysterious power
That lovely maiden sings.
The
boatman in his small skiff is
Seized by a turbulent love,
No longer he
marks where the cliff is,
He looks to the mountain above.
I think the
waves must fling him
Against the reefs nearby,
And that did with her
singing
The lovely Loreley"

Mike doing some frog-gigging in the Rhine. We were on a walk and he just trotted down to the river and picked up a stick. I took the picture without understanding and then asked him what that was all about. Apparently a popular thing for the Schultzes to do. His uncle Howard, his wife Barbara, and their parents went on a Rhine cruise, and when someone asked "really, what did you do there?" Howard would tell them all about Frog-Gigging, where you would hunt the giant frogs of the Rhine with big sticks. Quite fun. Then he would say "what do you think we did? It's the Rhine. We drank wine and looked at castles." Perhaps you have to know the Schultzes to understand....

The ruins of Burg Rheinfels in St. Goar, which we didn't get a chance to visit. Nest time!

And here is the aforementioned Burg Katz. Now owned by a Japanese businessman. Apparently the German government wouldn't allow the sale of a castle to a foreigner for private use so ostensibly it's a hotel but nobody's ever stayed there.

Hostile Brothers

Two castles called the "Hostile Brothers." They really were owned by two brothers, and the story depends on who is telling it. I've heard that the two brothers were fighting over inheritance and built the castles to defend themselves against each other. Rick Steves says "take two brothers, two castles, a wall, and a lovely maiden and build your own legend." :) The actual names of these castle ruins is Sterrenberg and Liebenstein; Liebenstein is now a hotel and restaurant; looks really cool, I'd love to go stay there sometime!! Anyone up for a road trip?



Oh, SO disappointed! Just found this on a Middle Rhine website:

Sterrenberg, the more northern of the two, was built as early as in the
11th century. The newer Liebenstein Castle was only built between 1284 and 1290,
probably to protect Sterrenberg. When a 2.5 metre thick main curtain wall was
built outside of Sterrenberg as a reaction to the construction of Liebenstein,
people called it the ‘wall of discord’ and created the myth of the ‘Hostile
Brothers’.

DAY 2: SLEEPING LATE AND SEEING MORE OF THE RHINE

After our wild winefest night (the pictures of the fireworks amazingly didn't turn out well), we stumbled downstairs around 12:15 p.m. and asked for some orange juice. The owner chuckled and said if we wanted to stay on the Rhine an extra night he would give us a deal, the 2 nights for 105 Euros. We had wasted half the day already and really didn't feel like doing a lot of active exploring, so we took him up on it and set out to find some lunch and formulate a plan for the day. We ate at a mediocre restaurant on the river, checked out river cruise times, and realized we had missed the cruise we wanted and there wasn't another one until after 4 p.m. So, being the industrious lot we were, we set out by auto to explore some more. We set off due south, stopping whenever we found a pretty walk or a nice photo-op, and I read to Mike out of my guide books. This is Burg Maus, so named because it's just downstream from a castle called Burg Katz (for a family called the Katzen-something).

Being overly cautious making sure we would get in the picture as we set up a self timer on the camera at the Wine Fest. Goofy us...and this was only after 1 glass! Winefests can be dangerous; they sell you these teeny glasses of wine and you try one after the other, going from stand to stand trying to figure out what you like and then whoops, you've drank like 2 bottles of wine! Again, not fun when you're on the 4th floor of a hotel with narrow little stairs......There were great fireworks about 8 p.m., we went and sat on the riverbank and enjoyed the show, then listened to some live music, drank some more wine, and somehow made it back to the hotel.

We fairly quickly figured out that "schmuck" means "jewelry," in German, but it was still funny. ModeSchmuck is fashion jewelry. Which sounds nicer, you think?

A view across the river to Boppard as we wait to board the ferry to go back to the WineFest! :)

Carrie being doused with boiling oil

Carrie in one of the castle gates underneath a "Machicolation," which is the name of that little balcony. Defenders would dump boiling oil or drop heavy rocks onto any enemies that made it to that gate. The door was reduced in size so that people on horseback couldn't get through.

Very cloudy (but rain-free!) panoramic view of the rhine from Marksburg castle.

Marksburg

Our first Castle, Marksburg Castle. A bit north of Boppard on the Rhine, it dates from the 12th century and is very impressive because it's never been destroyed and is almost all original (except for the stucco, which is re-applied when needed. It must always be done using old techniques, but nobody has ever figured out how to do it as well as the original!) The website is interesting because obviously I wasn't able to get aerial views of the thing, and my pictures weren't as good. If you go to the website and click on "Circuit" you can go through all the rooms we were able to see, and if you click on "Panoramas" and then DOUBLE-click on one of the available panoramic shots you can see almost exactly what it was like.


We were a little disappointed that we didn't get to see more of the castle. We didn't see any servants quarters, only saw one bedroom, etc. But it seemed very well preserved and it was a good first castle for Mike.

Boppard hotel

Our hotel in Boppard, the Hotel Ohm Patt. Our room was, I believe, the top one on the right. ABOVE the pink part of the building. :) This became a pertinent piece of information at the end of the Winefest activities on Saturday night.......


The hotel owner was a Brit who moved to Boppard in January to take over running this hotel from his sister and brother-in-law, who I guess were burnt out on hotel life. He was great fun and very helpful when we needed help getting to our room later in the night ;)

Arrival in Boppard

BOPPARD, on the Rhine. We made this our first stop because they were having their annual Weinfest complete with fireworks over the Rhine on Saturday. We were wet as we trekked to the Tourist Information and luckily scored a hotel room in the city (I think one of only like 4 left) and then walked the few blocks to the hotel. We got checked in, and then came back to the main square to get some lunch, which was about when the rain let up. There were about 5 different bands playing music, wandering around on the streets, and boy did that music make you wanna dance!

Mother Mosel, Father Rhine

Here's Carrie, at the point of the Mother Mosel joining the Father Rhine. And it's wet. This did not bode well for the rest of the trip, which this loving wife had agreed to postpone for one week.

DAY 1- KOBLENZ, BOPPARD, MARKSBURG CASTLE

We drove Friday night and spent the night in Koblenz, which lies at the junction of the Rhine and Mosel river. Saturday morning we woke up to pouring rain, but decided to head out to see the only interesting thing in Koblenz, the Deutsches Eck (German Corner,) the point where the rivers join together. The word Koblenz is a derivation of confluence, named for this junction. Anyway, at this spot there is this huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm on a horse. A statue was erected here in the 1890's but was destroyed in WWII (something one hears more than once on a tour of this region). This copy was erected in 1985. There's Mike with his pretty Cirque du Soleil umbrella, which aggravatingly developed a tear on one of the seams and I've only used it once before. Not happy.

Just got back from our 1 week trip to the Rhine and Mosel valleys in Germany, as well as Trier and Luxembourg City. We left on Friday evening, 30 September and stayed til Saturday afternoon, 8 October. Pictures and stories to follow!!!