Rhine River

What a weekend! We didn't end up going to Amsterdam, instead we rented a car and drove to Germany to see the famous Rhine River! The Rhine River is home to many of the castles in Germany as this river was used to transport goods to many cities inland and the castles of the rich oversaw these deliveries. It was so interesting to see and read about the history of the castles and those who inhabited them. Many of them are ruins as they were destroyed in the war, however, some are still private homes and others are hotels/tourist attractions. I think we went at the right time of year because there was little traffic along the river and I've read that this is a very busy spot during the spring and summer. The map here shows some of the castles along the river in the Rhine Valley - the river runs a total of 1350kms through Germany, Netherlands, France and Switzerland.

Dylan worked on Friday and I met him at the airport to pick up the rental at 4:30pm. We left right away and got out of the city fine. I was a little nervous about him driving with the crazy Belgian drivers, but we got along great. We drove out of Belgium and through the Netherlands to get to Germany. The German highways were a little crazy, but we got used to getting out of the way of the speeding cars approaching. The Autobahn wasn't as scary as I thought it was going to be. We had a VW Polo (4 door hatchback) that maxed out at about 140km/hr, and cars were passing us like we were driving Miss Daisy! Even the highways that had speedlimits were max 130 - and cars were just using this as a guideline and drove like there was no speedlimit at all.

We arrived at our destination on Friday night - Bonn, Germany - at about 7pm and headed out to explore the city of Cologne (Koln in German). It was a really nice city with the Rhine running down the middle of it. They had an absolutely huge cathedral and a nice shopping area. We really didn't get to see too much, but we explored, walked around and tried a German beer. I would definately like to go back to Cologne to see more of the city - it is a very short train ride from Brussels. Friday night we stayed in Bonn at a nice hotel on a golfcourse in the middle of nowhere!

On Saturday we were on the road early and drove along the river to start our castle viewing. The Rhine is so big that we kinda started in the middle of the river (from Cologne) and we headed toward Rhine Valley. Most of the highway that we drove was along the river, however, in some spots, we drove through small towns to get back along the highway - this led to us getting lost quite a few times before finding our way back toward the scenic drive. We knew we were on the right track becuase we just kept the river to our right the whole time.....it was easy to tell if we were headed in the wrong direction. The map above starts in Bonn where we stayed the night, but we had a little ways to go before the highway was right along the river. Once we got situated, it was practically impossible to get lost unless you veered away from the road, which we did a few times in order to get better views of the castles. This is a picture of the first castle we saw. The area around the Rhine is loaded with vineyards. I never saw a vineyard before, but saw many fields filled with them along the drive. The coasts looked like patchwork quilts - and they were all along slopes, which means that the grapes would most likely need to be handpicked. This castle is privately owned, so we didn't get much closer, but there was a walking track along the vineyard and a parking lot at the bottom, so they were ok with people coming to see the property. As we continued along the drive, we stopped when we could to get pictures, but with a two lane highway, sometimes it was difficult.

It was funny that as we were driving along we got used to scanning the side of the mountains looking for castles, they were everywhere. There were alot of ruins and imagining the history behind them - I was in awe! This picture does not give this castle justice. It is embedded along the side of a mountain overlooking a small town. We couldn't find a way to get to it, so just took pictures from the road.

The white castle pictured is on an island in the middle of the river. It was used as a place where tolls were collected from boats passing by. There was actually a man on the island with his dog - so I assume that it is privately owned now. It would be a terrible place to live because during the day (Saturday) we saw a minimum of at least 50 barges travelling up and down the river. Some of the barges had a load on them, others were empty. Most that we saw had cars and boats on them which to me indicated that the owners lived on the barges. We did see some of this in Paris while walking along one of the canals. People actually live on the barges with their kids. I can't imagine a life like that, but would be a way to see the world.
This castle was one of my favorites. It was on the other side of the river, so we couldn't get a closer look, but for some reason, I love the zig zag driveway....kinda like Lombard Street in San Fran! While driving by we saw a few cars, so I'm not sure if it is privately owned or not. It is actually really big, although doesn't look it in the picture.

Throughout our drive, we only saw a few places where you can cross. We drove down the west side of the river, but I'm not sure if that was the best way or not. We crossed multiple bridges in Cologne and saw one when we got to Mainz, but only saw a few ferries (probably 3) along the drive. For some reason, we weren't allowed to go on a ferry with our rental - it was part of the rental agreement and they stressed the fact that we couldn't. Since we always follow the rules, we didn't cross. The highway is situated so close, that you can easily see both sides of the river and therefore most of the castles on both sides.

We arrived in Mainz later in the afternoon where we got lost for over an hour and finally stopped at a hotel to ask for directions out of the city. We were staying in Sedan, France Saturday night at the biggest castle in Europe. We drove from Mainz, Germany through Luxembourg and then into France. We arrived in Sedan late evening and at this time realized that we didn't have the name of the castle or directions to it. We tried to steal internet to look it up online on the side of the road, but weren't successful. I got out of the car and walked toward a group of teenagers and said "we are staying at a castle tonight, but aren't sure the name of it - do you happen to know if there is a castle that is a hotel closeby?" The kids looked at me like I had 5 heads and said to go up the street and turn left......Once we drove about 10 feet up the street - the biggest castle in Europe came into view - no wonder they thought I was nuts....you can probably see this monstrous building for miles around!

The castle was very cool! When we arrived we had to drive over a drawbridge to get onto the grounds where the hotel was located on the inside. It was quite large - the hotel only took up a fraction of the grounds. There was also a museum, a few restaurants and other things to see. We didn't stay too long, but roamed around in the morning a bit. It was fun to stay in a castle although it was quite modernized. Only one wall in our hotel room was the original wall, but some of the rooms in the lobby and restaurant were all stone. This was the end of our castle viewing - it was a great time! I am going to end this post here and write about Sunday next post!