After a leisurely start and breakfast at the hotel, our first stop was at the train station where we bought our Rheinland Pfalz pass for the day. With this pass, you can hop on and off any train in the region from 9am on, and this would be our return trip in the afternoon. Also, if you have a valid train ticket, there is 20% discount on the cruise. Then we strolled about the village for half an hour before going down to the dock for our cruise down the Rhine.
The KD boat turned up right on time at 10:15. The boat consists of three decks. The bottom deck seemed to be all restaurants, but it was closed. The middle deck was a restaurant on one side, and Subway on the other. The top deck was largely in the open, with only about a dozen seats inside. For best views, we opted for out in the open on the bow. While this gave us great views of the beautiful Rhine scenery, it was also rather windy and cold. The view was definitely worth it, with quaint towns on both sides of the river, and castles on the hills behind several of them. We cruised for just over 2 hours, and disembarked at Braubach.
Braubach is a beautiful little town. Our purpose here was to visit Marksburg Castle at the top of the hill behind the town.....'we won't have to walk' he said, ' there is a little train we can take up'........ Needless to say, there was no sign of said train, in fact there was no sign as to which direction we should head for the castle. So, along with a German couple who had also disembarked at the same time, we had to stop for directions, then started climbing. The track was rough in places and steep, it took us a bit over 15 minutes. When we emerged at the top, the first thing we saw was 'the little train' just going back down the hill!!
Marksburg castle is the only one on the Rhine that hasn't been damaged by war at some time, so gives a great idea of what a medieval castle was really like. It has been lived in for over 700 years, and construction began in the 12th century. Unfortunately the tour was in German, but we had a booklet in English to read through. It was fascinating, helps make some of those historical novels I like to read come to life. You really do wonder how they built these structures in such difficult locations all those centuries ago.
After the walk up, going down was not a problem, then we made for the train station to find the next train back to St Goarshausen.
The trains are great, generally on time, quiet and comfortable. Once at St Goarshausen, we had to find the Loreley ferry to cross the river to St Goar. Headed for the river, and found it straight away, and it was ready to go. It only took a few minutes and we were off again. We were headed for Rheinfels castle, and I was delighted to see a sign that suggested there was a bus to get there. But, of course, we had no luck finding it, so we walked again ...... Uphill ... at least it was on a smooth footpath all the way.
Rheinfels castle was built in 1245, part of the castle is now a hotel, and much of the rest is in ruins, but it is huge. We had a copy of the Rick Steve's self guided tour, and the ticket office gave us more too. It must have been a magnificent structure in it's day, and much bigger than Marksburg. There is reconstruction work going on, and I would love to see it completed.
You can see a pyramid of large boulders stacked in the third photo down, these were used with a catapult. But as they were difficult to make, once the hostilities were finished, someone had to go out and fetch them back for next time!!
Back down into St Goar town, we had to find the train station to head back to Bacharach. After asking directions, we arrived just in time to jump on a train (what timing!! - the next train would have been quite a wait).
We had a short rest before going out for dinner - tonight at Hotel Am Markt. It was fairly busy for a Monday night, and hence a little slow, but the food was lovely. Back to the hotel to collapse, exhausted. Getting to sleep was not a problem, finishing the blog for the day was!!
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