Today we went to Rheinfels Castle. It is a ruin in the town of St. Goar, two train stops north of where we are staying. It was built in the 1200’s and was mostly destroyed by the French in 1797. It’s a cool place to see if you don’t like all the other places that are rebuilt to look like they did in the past. (5 pictures)
Denise next to some old catapult balls.
Currently sitting on a bench on the bank of the Rhine River.
To take the local trains, you buy a ticket from a vending machine on the platform. The machine in Bacharach had an English option. On the return trip, that machine only had German text. Between the two of us we managed to figue it out and get back to the hotel. We were very proud of ourselves.
To get to Burg Eltz, we took two trains, each about a half hour ride, then hiked for an hour uphill (the guide books say that it takes normal people 90 minutes). Then reversed that to get back. We took an English speaking tour because I only know about 5 German words, and I learned them from watching the TV show Hogan’s Heroes. Too bad our school systems don’t teach foreign languages better. I had two years of Spanish classes and I never knew enough to have a real conversation. The kids here all speak English fluently. Our tour guide couldn’t have been more than 25. When we were on the train from Brussels, some young people kept switching between English, French and German mid sentence. (3 pictures)
Main street Bacharach.
