Day 7 - Sep 7, 2009 Last updated: 10/10/09 8:30pm PT
Day sieben, German castle ruins, Roman wall.
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.
Denise and some old catapult balls.
Dark scary tunnel inside the castle
Had lunch in St. Goar. Here are pictures of Denise under the world’s largest hand made cuckoo clock, and the town taken from the castle.
We actually had a chance to sit down and relax for a little while. So we walked over to the Rhine and sat on a bench and watched the water, boats and people. While sitting on the bench, I had an epiphany. This region has many castles along the river. The castles were built because the Rhine is used to transport goods, and each castle would string a chain across the river to stop boats so taxes could be collected. As I walked around town looking for a free wifi spot, I found a lot of access points, but none were free. So the chains are gone along the river, but they’ve been thrown across the Internet.
I wouldn’t stay at the hotel Malerwinkel again, not because it was a bad place (it was fine), but because the wifi didn’t work. We stayed there because it had wifi and was a few blocks away from the train tracks. Most of the other hotels were closer to the tracks. We didn’t want to be bothered by train noise when we were sleeping. It turns out train noise wasn’t a problem. The German trains are electric (even the freight trains in this area), so they are quieter. The gates that block the roads do not have bells. And the trains do not blow their whistles when they cross an intersection. Obviously, if the gates are down, there’s a train coming, don’t cross the tracks. Americans must be dumber than Germans since we require all sorts of noises to keep us safe.