Rudesheim, and cruising the Rhine River castles
What a day this was! On Saturday, we spent the morning in the charming little wine village of Rudesheim, then cruised through a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the castle-lined 65 km of the Rhine River downstream from Rudesheim. After editing, I have 714 photos in today’s folder. That’s probably a new record for me 🙂
Finally, I got to see a sunrise instead of clouds or rain! This was shot looking up the Rhine from our docking position at Rudesheim at 07:56, but the colours went on for about 20 minutes.
There seemed to be a rush to get as many freight trains through town before people started moving around. This train was carrying about 100 new Audis. High on the hill is the famous Niederwald Monument depicting “Germania”, erected in 1883.
At 9:00 am, we boarded a couple of little trains for a 10-minute ride to Siegfried’s Mechanical Music Museum. This was one of the many excursions included in our cruise fare.
Siegfried’s museum has an amazing collection of mechanical music-makers. I imagined myself busking on Main Street in Whitehorse with this little rig. Accompanied by my husky Monty instead of a monkey 🙂
The sound from this machine was wonderful! It’s housed in a former wine cellar. The museum was far better than anything I had imagined, and we both highly recommend a visit.
I shot a video of one of these wonderful machines to give you some idea of what a visit to this museum is like.
The oldest section of the museum building has a painted ceiling, this section depicting the expulsion of Adam and Eve.
At about 10:30, we boarded a gondola for a ride to the Niederwald Monument. There was a stand selling sparkling wine, and we bought a couple of little bottles, to get the day going in the right direction.
The view of the Rhine Valley from the top is quite impressive.
The gondola gave some excellent views of the grape harvesting action as well as the broad scenic views. With the rain we’ve had recently, harvesting was going full speed ahead on this sunny (though chilly) day.
Back down in Rudesheim, we ended up, as everyone does, at the tiny street Drosselgasse. There, we simply had to try their local wine specialty called Federweisser. Excellent – far better than we’d been led to expect. At the bottom end of the narrow street, we stopped again to try another local drink, Rudesheimer coffee – a brandy-flamed drink that’s created at the table.
We made it back to the ship in time for our 1:00pm departure, but would have been happy to stay in Rudesheim for a couple of days. This is a look at some of the vineyards that are most famous for the Reislings they produce.
Okay, let’s get to the castles! Within minutes, we were nearing the ruins of Ehrenfels Castle, built for the Archbishop of Mainz in 1211. Like most of the castles in this region, it was destroyed by French troops in 1689.
On an island across from Ehrenfels is this little toll station commonly called the Mouse Tower, from a legend about a nasty archbishop who was eaten by mice there. Nice story, but “maut” is French for “toll”, and that’s the actual source of the name.
Rheinstein Castle is perched about 90 meters above the Rhine. Construction was begun in about 900 AD, and it was restored as a summer home in the 1820s by Prince Friedrich Wilhem of Prussia.
Reichenstein Castle was probably built in the 11th Century. Destroyed in 1254 (that’s a long story), it was completely rebuilt in 1899.
Sooneck Castle is another from the 11th Century that was destroyed in 1253. It was rebuilt as a hunting lodge in 1834. There’s a huge quarry operation beside it, and a large freight boat was being noisily loaded with rock as we passed.
We saw a few kayakers on the river. On a warm summer, it would be a great way to see this section of the river, over a week or two.
We met the lovely old paddlewheeler Goethe.
I’m running out of time, so am going to post some photos without captions, so you see what was going on.
Rail lines run along both sides of the river here, and trains were common, both freight and passenger.
Many of the vineyards are so steep that looking across at them appears almost as an aerial view.
I’m not sure what the celebration was for, but it looked and tasted good to me 🙂
Approaching Loreley Rock.
Statue of Loreley.
Cruising down the Rhine River – castle after castle…
We arrived at Boppard at about 3:30 pm.
“Captain Ferdy” docking the ship. He’s been great – very visible and personable, he clearly loves what he’s doing.
Let’s go up a chairlift for a view! Cathy’s not great with heights, but she was a trooper about this.
Us at the top.
One of the most dramatic of the many bends on the Rhine, with Boppard at the far right.
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