The mighty Rhine, taken from Gedeonseck, near Boppard
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The Bendiest Bend on the Rhine

Last weekend Marty and I visited Köln (Cologne) and the Rhine valley. The Rhine river has been an important trade route for centuries, and it still is today. It is over 1300 kilometers long, connecting the Swiss Alps with the coast of the Netherlands, and it's full of barges carrying imports and exports up and down the river. Since we only had a day or so to see it, we focused our attention on the small section between Koblenz and Bacharach, where most of the Sehenswürdigkeiten (sights) -- like all those famous castles sitting on top of vineyards -- are located.

We visited a couple of really interesting castles. Rheinfels Castle, in St. Goar, is a huge medieval ruin, complete with secret passages that require a flashlight(!). Marksburg Castle, in Braubach, is the only medieval castle on the Rhine that has never been destroyed, and we toured the interior along with a group of German teenagers who appeared to be on a school trip (on a Sunday?).

We stopped in Boppard to look at some well-preserved Roman ruins, and ended up also taking a Sesselbahn (chair lift) to the top of a hill where we could see the huge horseshoe curve in the river. The picture above is a composite of several photos, and the ones below show how we got up there, what else we saw, and how we came back down.

I'll post the rest of the Rhine pictures on the Postcards page later on.



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1. How we got up there (look how close we were to the vineyard!)
2. The sign at the top of the lift
3. Vierseenblick, or a place where the Rhine supposedly looks like four lakes
4. Coming back down
5. A view of the curve on the way down