EUROPE BLOG May 6th, 2023 - ROMANTIC RHINE

5/6/23- Only a few more days with Sharece on this trip as we start our sixth week of traveling. I’m going to miss her laughter and insight so much.

Our morning starts at 10am as we get to the dock and purchase tickets for the 11am cruise down the Rhine to Bacharach. It takes 1 hour as we thoroughly enjoy the nice weather, calm waters and the many castles perched on hilltops along the way. What a fantastic way to travel back in time with over 60 castles in view.

In Bacharach, we disembark and immediately ingest ourselves into the medieval German town. The streets are bare as I believe we may have missed the morning rush of tourist (especially for a Saturday), so we roam the town like we own the place, except for the cars that occasionally whiz by. There is a medieval reenactment going on so perhaps that's where everyone was.

There’s not much to the town at all but our next cruise boat is not until 3:15pm, so we travel just outside the city to a winery specializing in white German wines. We’re mainly interested in the sweeter Rieslings so we taste about 5 before settling on a bottle to buy. 

Another attraction in Bacharach is Stahleck Castle, which is quite a hike to get to. Sharece stays back while I power through the stairs and incline to the top (which I don't recommend after drinking wine). It’s a little bit disappointing but worth it for the most part and kills some time.

Our next cruise boat takes 45 minutes until it reaches the town of St. Goar. Now this place IS known for their castle (Rheinsfels Castle). It’s completely in ruins and very interesting to walk the grounds and again almost enjoy the place to ourselves. Luckily there’s a bus (3.5 Euros each) that takes us up the hill otherwise it would’ve killed our legs and timing. Unfortunately, the last bus going down is at 5pm and we don’t make that one with all the time we spend roaming the castle and seeing the views of the Rhine.

The decline is steep going back to town but only takes about 15 minutes before we’re in the heart. We take a few photos of the surrounding area but it’s not as picturesque as we’d like, so we continue down the road to catch a ferry boat across the river to St Goarshausen (which we barely make by the way), and buy train tickets to travel back to Rudesheim.

What a fantastic day it was and somehow the rain never really showed its ugly head. We got a great mixture of sunlight and breezes to compliment our journey, which kinda sums up our entire trip as well. The Rhine area has not disappointed us in the least and so glad we’re able to experience this.

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