Riding the waves indeed, albeit only on a car ferry from Bingen to Rudesheim and taking only 15 minutes ! This interesting boat journey across the Rhine shaved off a good 1 hour of driving, saved us from looping all the way around to and from Mainz and back down the Rhine. But first things first, we made a night stopover in the village of Boppard, just in time for a sunset stroll in the rather busy town, as we found Boppard to be quite full of coach-based tourists and loads of German retirees, decked out in the mild Autumn sun. The following day we drove on to the next village of Oberwesel and we climbed the fortress walls to have an excellent elevated view of the Rhine and the neat traditional German farmhouses, with colorful external wooden beams delighting passers-by. Next stop would be the village of Bacharach which we would always remember as the place where we chanced upon hard-working farmers busying themselves in the vast amount of vineyards all around town, lifting and transporting by muscles power crates of harvested grapes, each weighing perhaps 10KG !
Waving good bye to these hard workers, we drove on passed the famous Loreley - "the Rock" standing proudly in the way of the Rhine for centuries, forcing the river to swerve around this steep promontory of headland. We actually came across the Loreley viewpoint twice, up and down the river and the headland was very much beautified by the seasonal Autumn leaves of gold and sienna red. We made an early stop in another Rhine village, Braubach and spent the night in a spooky old farmhouse-cum-hotel, completed with creaky wooden stairs, dimly-lit meandering corridors and weird hand-drawn paintings from the hippies era; I should also mention out of fairness, that the farmhouse room on the attic was rustically decorated with modern comfort and the German breakfast was a feast ! And we soldiered on to the once-German-capital, Bonn, the birth place of one of the great composers, Beethoven. We milled around town for a few hours, having parked our car way outside the city boundary to avoid the road congestion and took a bus to the Bonn Hauptbahnhof. Having Rhine-ing up and down, we were ready to join up again with the Mosel River for a relaxing drive back to Belgium. Phew !
Riding the waves indeed, albeit only on a car ferry from Bingen to Rudesheim and taking only 15 minutes ! This interesting boat journey across the Rhine shaved off a good 1 hour of driving, saved us from looping all the way around to and from Mainz and back down the Rhine. But first things first, we made a night stopover in the village of Boppard, just in time for a sunset stroll in the rather busy town, as we found Boppard to be quite full of coach-based tourists and loads of German retirees, decked out in the mild Autumn sun. The following day we drove on to the next village of Oberwesel and we climbed the fortress walls to have an excellent elevated view of the Rhine and the neat traditional German farmhouses, with colorful external wooden beams delighting passers-by. Next stop would be the village of Bacharach which we would always remember as the place where we chanced upon hard-working farmers busying themselves in the vast amount of vineyards all around town, lifting and transporting by muscles power crates of harvested grapes, each weighing perhaps 10KG !
Waving good bye to these hard workers, we drove on passed the famous Loreley - "the Rock" standing proudly in the way of the Rhine for centuries, forcing the river to swerve around this steep promontory of headland. We actually came across the Loreley viewpoint twice, up and down the river and the headland was very much beautified by the seasonal Autumn leaves of gold and sienna red. We made an early stop in another Rhine village, Braubach and spent the night in a spooky old farmhouse-cum-hotel, completed with creaky wooden stairs, dimly-lit meandering corridors and weird hand-drawn paintings from the hippies era; I should also mention out of fairness, that the farmhouse room on the attic was rustically decorated with modern comfort and the German breakfast was a feast ! And we soldiered on to the once-German-capital, Bonn, the birth place of one of the great composers, Beethoven. We milled around town for a few hours, having parked our car way outside the city boundary to avoid the road congestion and took a bus to the Bonn Hauptbahnhof. Having Rhine-ing up and down, we were ready to join up again with the Mosel River for a relaxing drive back to Belgium. Phew !
