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????? :(