20 Sep: Cruising the Rhine

(This is an edited and expanded version of the first post for this date.)

This day we took a cab from the hotel at 8:15 for a short ride to the other side of the Rhine, to the ticket office for the KD Line, the company that runs most of the day-cruise boats up and down the "Romantic Rhine"—the stretch of the river that has a series of hilltop castles overlooking vineyards that slope down to quaint towns.

We bought tickets for a one-way ride to Rudesheim, the other terminus of the "romantic" stretch.

You can look at all 65 of the photos we kept (out of 235 taken!) in the gallery. Here is a sampling of what we saw.

The sides of this stretch of the Rhine gorge are mostly thickly forested, but quite a few of the hillsides have been cleared for steeply-terraced vineyards.

There are small towns scattered all along the riverside, many with lovely half-timbered buildings.

The cruise ship is like a bus -- it makes 15 stops between Koblenz and Rudesheim. People get off and on at each stop. We got off at one of the prettiest towns, Bacharach, and spent a couple of hours there.

The town has a pretty, unusually colorful church

that is noted for its bawdy capitals

Serpents suck at the breasts of a guilty woman to warn against adultery.

We walked up to, and through, the 14th century town wall, admired the vineyards behind it, then climbed up what is now a viewing tower for a brilliant view of the town below.

Panorama—click and then scroll.

We returned to the town center,

That's the viewing tower we climbed in the center.

where there are many Weinstuben (wine cafes),

The Wine, the Wine, is worth gold; It relieves all pain; It makes the stupid wise; and cleanses evil hearts.

and enjoyed a glass of the local Reisling at the leaning-in-all-directions Altes Haus (old house).

This picture does not need straightening.

before resuming our river cruise.

And, oh yes, the castles! Most of them were built in the 13th or 14th century from the dark slate sedimentary rock that forms the gorge, rebuilt in the 19th century, and restored even until today. The first castle we saw, Schloss Stolzenfels was a bit of a disappointment

There's a castle in that scaffold, they say.

But it got better after that—way better!

Town, castle.

Another town, another castle.

From Rudesheim, we took the train back to Koblenz -- a one-hour ride, rather than another five hours by boat. We got back to our hotel 11 hours after leaving it this morning, just in time to enjoy a lovely sunset view of Koblenz across the river.