The Wreckless Rhine River

We started our morning as planned and checked out the shops where we had window shopped the night before. But the first shop we went in had everything we wanted so it was a one stop shopping experience and the store owner was great and gave us extra discounts too. Preston and I had plenty of time to make the Rhine River cruise. Anita drove the car along and planned on meeting us in Boppard about two hours up the river.
On the river we met both the families who we saw at the restaurant the night before. The young couple from San Diego had traded houses with a family from Germany and were there for a month. Oh, the advantages of working from your home!
This part of the Rhine is filled with castles and small villages along the banks. The most famous rock on the river is called the Loreley. At this point the river is the most dangerous with a rocky bottom and swirling currents and whirlpools. There is a legend that an enchanting mistress would sing and the sailors would be spellbound by her songs and crash their boats in the river, never to be heard of again. We didn't hear any singing though.

On our cruise were lots of Japanese tourists and they pushed their way to take numerous pictures of the rock and every castle and village. Preston and I laughed when a young couple asked someone else to take their picture with the Loreley behind them. Then they stood straight and ridged and just before the shoot was taken they held up peace signs.
Preston had to copy the Japanese couple but he did a pretty weak impression. This town is St. Goar and we disembarked to run up to the castle and check out the cuckoo clock.

Anita met us at the dock and walked with us to the largest free hanging cuckoo clock. We were there just minutes before 11:00 so we hung around to see it go off. We were a bit disappointed on the amount of movement on the clock and the weak sound.
From there we said good-bye to Anita who was going to shop and Preston and I headed up the hill to check out the ruins of the Rheinfels Castle. We had to be back to the boat in just 50 minutes so we had to walk really fast to get up there and back and have any time to look around. The walk was just about straight up and Preston doubted several times whether we would make it or not; I never doubted.
When we got to the top we realized that we could have had Anita drive up us to the parking lot and saved ourselves a lot of time and effort, oh well the exercise was good for us. We made it with about 10 minutes to check out the labyrinth of ruins that made up this castle. Once we got there Preston was really glad that we had made the effort.
We definitely wished we had more than 10 minutes to look around; we could have spent hours checking out all the rooms, halls, stairways and walkways but we didn't dare miss the boat. It would be a great place to play hide-n-go seek.
The views of the Rhine from the top were also great.

As we started back we found that there was a train/tram that took you right to the dock and we opted to ride all the way down for just €4, plus it assured us that we would make it to the boat on time. We ended up having to wait 20 minutes for the boat to arrive and we were mad because we could have looked around in the castle more and walked down easily.

This is a view of Rheinfels castle from the boat as we sailed away.
Here are just a few pictures of castles we saw on our way.


We ended our river trip at Boppard and Anita was there waiting for us to get off. Preston and I were laughing because we followed a man and woman pushing a baby stroller with their dog in it! Preston wanted us to be the last ones off the boat and make Anita nervous that we had missed the boat, but luckily I'm not that mean.

Boppard is a larger city and Anita had been there for quite some time and had scouted it out for us. She had found a great Christmas shop that she and I loved, while Preston was less than enthusiastic about it. He did like the hat he found at another store, that made him look very German, but since it was €60 he decided he really didn't need it.
He decided he wanted Italian food for lunch and we found this great Italian restaurant and it was in an even greater building. We ate outside across the walk and gawked at the building the whole time.
I made Preston get up and take a picture of the building and in the process he took a picture of Anita taking a picture of him.
Finally, we had to take our leave of Germany and head back to the Netherlands. It was only suppose to take us 2 1/2 hours to get back but we hit a lot of traffic and so it was over 3 hours. It still blows me away that in three hours from Anita's house you can be in Paris, Germany or Luxembourg and in three hours from our house you can be in Mexico or St. Johns.