Where to start….hmmmm.

Last night, we stayed at the hotel in Boppard and I just want to add that the FIRE ALARM went off at 1am. I only want to add this because the fire alarm in the building I live in has a habit of going off at early hours in the AM (as Roxanna, Carolyn, Craig and Mona will verfiy) so I am thinking that the problem is ME.

Anyway…

We were up early, at breakfast by 8:30am and on the road by 9:15am. Our first stop was the Loreley. Legend has it that a young maiden by the name of Loreley sat upon cliff brushing her hair. The ship Captains, travelling down the Rhine, would see her and be spell bound by her beauty and thus, crash their ships upon the rocks. Fiction or not, men are…well…ummm……I need to be careful what I say here, my bosses are men. 🙂

After taking about a dozen or so pictures, we wanted to see a few more castles before we left. We had to take a small ferry across the Rhine (only about 10 minutes). There are two castles called Burg Katz and Burg Mouse (castles Cat and Mouse) along with Burg Rheinfels. There was a very steep and twisty road up to the top that was quite scary and narrow (something similar like to the road up to Norquay). Once at the top, we had an amazing view of Burg Katz and Burg Rheinfels (Burg Mouse was not very easy to see and such, was not able to get any pictures). Once we had our fill of pictures, we had to take the same road down. ekkkk.

Our next stop was Marksburg (originally called Burg Brubach). Among the many hilltop castles which flank the Rhine on both banks, it is the only one which has escaped ruin or romantic renewals and largely maintains its medievel in spite of some 17th, 18th and also 20th century addtions. The BEST part of the tour was that we were allowed to take pictures (this unlike Burg Eltz where pictures were not allowed). Not only did I take over 100 pictures, but I also photographed the english booklet I was able to use during the tour (the tour was in German and my German ain’t that good).

After the tour and we had our fill of castles (honestly, there are so many – you turn a corner, and there is another one – it is impossible to see them all) and we wanted to make it to Dernau in the Ahr. This is the same place that Stacy and I went to last year when we were in Germany…the wine is Wunderbar. I spent a fair bit of my Euro as there were wine I wanted to try that I did not get a chance to try the last time I was here. Tia says I am a Wino???…well, if you are good at something???…

We were back on the Autobann by about 5pm and were heading home.

I have uploaded the pics to my Flickr site…the link in on the side bar.

Selena