Castles & Wine, Mosel & Rhine - Part Two

Sunday morning we went down to breakfast in the dining room, where we learned our little mini-Audrey is a huge lover of German breakfast cold cuts.  Girlfriend must have downed several pieces of some kind of wurst!  She may actually pack some pounds on now......ha!  She doesn't sit still long enough!

This picture is from the website of the hotel, but I wanted to show how neat the room was.  I think it was once a Knight's Hall.

After breakfast, we headed over to St. Goar, Germany, which is along the Rhine River.  It was a perfect hour drive for Audrey to sleep off her cold cuts as we winded through the mountains that separate the rivers. 

We parked at Rheinfels Castle with the intention of ending up back here in time to do a tour before it closed for the day.  According to Rick Steves, it is one of the best castles in the Rhineland.  So we headed down hill (on foot, mind you!!!) to St. Goar.

That descent (and future ascent on the way back up) should have been our first clue that we would not be touring Rheinfels Castle. 

We decided to do a river cruise.  Rick Steves describes the hour long stretch between St. Goar and Bacharach, Germany as the best for castle viewing.  So that's what we did. We traveled on the Goethe.  It was a paddle wheel boat (pic below stolen from the company's website).  And we thought would be a perfect way to see the sights....

Not so perfect.  It's almost fully enclosed.  There are a few small viewing decks.  But from inside, it's really hard to see anything......  so on one of the first stops when people got off, we made a quick beeline towards the deck on the back so we could have a better view.  It ended up working out pretty well.  There were a bunch of friendly Americans out there that let us weasel our way in and get some good shots.

Pfalz Castle is shown in Rick Steves show on the Rhine and Mosel areas (can you tell yet that we are big fans?), and is described as a ship shaped castle built by a "Robber Baron" to levy taxes on ships as they made passage up and down the river.


We bid farewell to our paddle boat in Bacharach, Germany....about an hour away (by boat) from where we started, and we were greeted with this site:

Isn't that almost what you envision when you think of Germany?  Timbered buildings and castles on the hill?  If there had been a guy walking by in liederhosen carrying a beer stein, it would be almost quintessential!  


Bacharach was a cute town.  We wandered around for a bit, and decided that maybe we wanted to wander a bit more, and maybe not see Rheinfels castle back in St. Goar after all.  It probably wouldn't have been any fun for the girls anyway.....  and that climb!!  So we ordered our first scoop of Riesling ice cream, and it was surprisingly very good!!


Once we were done wandering in Bacharach we caught the 10 minute train back to St. Goar, and found a place for dinner.  Matt ordered Pork Knuckle!!  It sounds scarier then it was.  It was pretty much ham.  So you know he was happy!  He worked it off retrieving the car while the girls and I wandered on flat ground along the river.  He's so good!


We made our way back to the hotel, put the girls to bed, and retired to our beautiful terrace.  Sunday night's entertainment was brought to us by our nesting Mama swan.  

Someones dog got off the leash and made a mad dash at Mama swan and she went ballistic!  She proved to me why I am really paranoid about the girls around swans!!