on easter a cousin on my mother's side and his family visited me for the first time in wiesbaden. of course it was a done deal to get them on one of the rhine ships to show them the beauty that is the middle rhine valley. easter holiday was a rather frosty business this year, but even though there was lots of rain involved and very windy weather we did experience beautiful moments inbetween.
let me tell you a bit about the ship tour. basically you enter the ship on one of the many harbours along the rhine river, for example we chose the city of rüdesheim. you can choose various tours, long ones, short ones, or special ones ( they offer culinary tours, castle tours, event tours etc ), ours was a simple middle rhine valley tour with end goal st. goarshausen. you have a couple of hours of leisure time there, until you return to the harbour to fetch the ship back to rüdesheim. the journey time from rüdesheim to st. goarshausen is about 2 hours, leisure time about 4 hours and the tour back is about 3 hours ( because the ship has to go upstream ). so you´re basically gone the whole day. which for some people might be tedious, but i simply love it. you can eat on the ship, you can drink, you can sit below-deck if it rains, you can spend your time on the upper deck if sun's out. and while the ship is making its way downstream you can marvel at the many vineyard mountains, about at least 8 castles & cities and the massive rhine river meandering its way through the valley. it's a really beautiful experience. i shot about 200 pictures on this day and i narrowed it down to 100. the first part of the easter trip along the rhine river is just down below.
bye-bye rüdesheim, see you in the evening.
the view back into the direction of wiesbaden / mainz. it's not as hilly as downstream into the direction of koblenz / cologne. the river rhine has several islets, here you can see the rüdesheimer aue.
first stop: bingen, right across the other side of the river. with an ancient dockside crane next to the former customs authority building.
it was raining a bit as we started our tour.
first castle: rheinstein castle.
i'm always in awe of the beautiful structure of the mountains & the river running through them. the little village on the right with the camping site by the river is trechtinghausen.
castle no. 2: reichenstein castle.
the fact that the trees finally grew this beautiful shade of green that is always so distinctive for spring made my heart beat a little faster. and look at those houses. so beautifully nestled into these hills.
love this introspective picture of my ( not so ) little ( anymore ) second cousin. we were hiding out below-deck & enjoyed hot chocolate after freezing our asses off before.
she's such a funny sweet-heart.
castle no. 3: stahleck castle.
the landing stage of bacharach.
castle no. 4: schönburg castle.
the castle thrones over the little city of oberwesel.
church of our lady in oberwesel.
made another short stop. oberwesel is actually a really cute city, eventually i will travel there again, to show you more.
saint martin's parish church on the right & parts of the city wall.
medieval town fortifications.
we waved hello to the paddle steamer 'goethe'. it's the last remaining one on the river rhine. it's now a converted diesel-hydraulic.
bye-bye oberwesel!
it's always fascinating to see the steep vineyards on the slopes. the rhine valley gets lots of sun throughout the year and is a perfect place to grow really good wine.
we were slowly nearing the loreley rock. it's a really dangerous passage, lots of ships crashed in this area in the past. there's a legend that there once sat a beautiful woman on the rock and sang the most serene songs down into the valley which bewitched many sailors. they couldn't handle the very narrow passage anymore and smashed their boats against the shallows of the river. even recently ( a few years ago ) this actually happened, though i doubt that a beautiful siren was the reason behind it.
these container ships are a common sight on the rhine river. the river is one of the most busy waterways in germany. probably the main reason why shipwrecks still occur ( and the fact that the water level can get really low several times of the year, which lays open lots of shallows ).
first glimpse of st. goarshausen.
st. goarshausen even has 2 castles: katz & maus ( cat & mouse ). this is katz castle.
close-up.
when we arrived in st. goarshausen, we decided to do a little hike around the village. to be honest, about midway of our hiking/walking tour i thought we might never return on time to get the ship back, but we did it. and you know what? i am so proud of my orientation skills, like seriously, i have that strange thing going that i instinctively know which way to go, no matter how desperate a situation might seem :P i don't possess a lot of talents, but that is one talent that's always been VERY handy to me. family & friends do trust me with that by now ( even my father, with whom i once had a huge quarrel about finding the correct path back to our car through some woods in the french vosges mountains. :P )
we stumbled upon this pebble art. this is so visually pleasing to me. these were made by the artist detlef kleinen.
could stare at this the whole day. why is it so mesmerizing?
going underground.
and emerging on the other side to this. i love overgrown houses!
the perfect view down onto the river from the cliffs above st. goarshausen. on the other side, the village st. goar.
another favourite of mine. sometimes i manage to take good pictures of humans :P
this is my dad trying to photograph the purple flower in front of him. you can find him in poses like this fairly often :D
stairs to nowhere.
can't get enough of this view.
the look-out from which you can take a look into the rhine valley.
tell me, what's so satisfying about being able to look down onto something? is it the feeling of being like a giant?
the landing stage of our ship & part of the city of st. goarshausen.
and the view onto st. goar with the evangelical collegiate church. the little ship cruising on the river is actually a ferry.
st. goar & st. goarshausen. basically one city, but cut in half. therefore not one city, but two.
view onto katz castle again. unfortunately i haven't shot any maus castle pictures. apparently those two castles were always in feud with each other, like a cat chasing a mouse or the mouse messing with the cat, therefore it was decided to name them after those animals.
the ferry landing in st. goar.
we had to hurry up to get down to the valley and into the city again, so we continued our path. this was shot around the time when my fellow comrades doubted we'd ever come back in time. i told them to trust me, took the time to shoot some more pictures and then proceeded to lead them down into the city. this was the first time in the day when the sun peaked out of the clouds as well!
have i told you i like overgrown things & ruins?
random shrivelling cactus found in the stone walls. this is definitely not a local plant :P
random blossoms. i actually am in doubt over whether this was an apple tree blossom or a cherry tree one.
stay tuned for pt 2 of our easter weekend adventure.
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