Day 61: Romantic Rhine

Today we cruised the Romantic Rhine. Before we hopped on a boat, however, we took a train down to Bingen, the beginning of the UNESCO section of the Rhine (the "Middle Rhine"). As a side note, if a place is a UNESCO Heritage site, it's probably awesome. We only had a half hour in the small river town of Bingen before we got on the ferry, but we both thought it would have been a good place to stay for a night.

Along this middle section of the Rhine, about every 10 minutes on the boat you see a castle up on a hill. The castles were essentially built as medieval toll booths for the river traffic by independent princes, dukes, whatever.

An hour and a half into the trip we stopped at the town of St. Goar. We found a lunch spot and Kevin couldn't decide between sauerbraten and venison goulash, so we asked the waiter for a recommendation. He responded asking if we knew the American Rick Steves. We laughed and said yes. He said that when our bud Rick Steves ate there, he had the venison, so the decision was easy (and the venison was delicious).

After lunch we went up to Rhinesfels Castle. We walked the castle, which included exploring a few un-rehabed sections with a keychain flashlight, watching kids play with swords after being given a lesson by a dressed up peasant, looking out at the panoramic view of the Rhine down below, and sampling white wine made from grapes grown on the castle hillside.

After the castle fun we took a two hour ferry ride downstream to Koblenz. We sampled another Rhineland glass of white wine, then took a train back to our home base of Koln.

We didn't have much energy when we got home at 9:30, so we ate a snack in the hotel lobby and then hit the sack.