Euro Trip day 7
October 2nd - Thursday
jossel woke up and called a small B&B type place we found in our touristy book, in a small Rhine town called Bacharach. She had what she described as a tiny room for 40 euros, and we jumped on it.
We packed up, checked out and hopped on the local train to Koblenz, and from there down the Rhine to Bacharach. This stretch of the Rhine has a bunch of castles, and we snapped a few train-speed photos on the way.
Stairs going down in our hotel
Checking out, with the big-ole frame pack on.
Ok, this photo has no scenic value at all! What the heck jossel!
High-speed Rhine River pictures.
Raining here, sunny way ahead - typical Rhine/Mosel weather for us.
High speed castle touring, these are still train shots.
More hillside grape growin', up on the Rhine hills.
The castle on that hill has some crazy story about some Japanese guy buying it and wanting to renovate it to be some sort of Japanese tourist destination ala Disney, and then the town said "no freakin way" or something, and so now it is empty and sad.
Terraced vineyards on the hills - they kind of look abandoned and droopy now. But stuff was growing there.
Bacharach was another small riverside town with two roads along its long skinny length. Perched above it was another castle, this one now a hostel.
That's the hostel up on the hill.
The main drag of town.
The room in Bacharach was indeed small, but the bed was a 'full', and honestly, who needs a ton of room. We declared it perfect and went out for lunch. As we ate we checked the Rhine boat times - this was the real reason we came here. We noted that one left soon, and we were eating pretty close, so we ate fast - very un-european! and hit the docks.
The downside was we were just going to lunch and didn't have the camera. But getting an earlier boat was worth it. This was the most castle-choked part of the Rhine, and it was a nice leisurely cruise. The weather was somewhat typical of what we had been finding in Germany (although the locals didn't find it typical). It was bright and sunny, but dark clouds seemed to chase us everywhere, and without being over us we'd still get little drizzles of rain.
This is still from the train (hence the blurry tree), but I thought I'd split the pics up a bit. This is of the Loralei Rock on the left.
The Rhine much like the Mosel is flanked by hills covered in steep, terraced vineyards. And castles of course. The small towns that hug the Rhine have cathedral spires poking high above them, and trains whiz by on either bank.
We only went one way on the ferry, and hopped a train back. And didn't pay! On these local trains no conductor ever freakin asks for a ticket, even tho we sometimes see them. We spent like 45 euros ($63) on local trains between France and Germany on which no one checked our ticket. So this time we said "screw it!". And sure enough, no problem. Not that I advise it, since there IS a conductor, it is just on short train trips you probably won't see him.
The Bacharach B&B had wireless, with a really strong WEP key that was clearly rotated frequently. Kinda cool. So we had an easy time doing some research and deciding on our next stop. We had talked about a lot of things - Berlin, French Riviera, Belgium, Normandy, right back to Paris. We ended up deciding on Brussels, Belgium. We found a cool web site rates2go or something like that, that did last minute discount booking, and online booked a room. This was especially nice because the primary language in Belgium is Flemish, whatever the hell that is - all I know is they put lots of the same vowels together a lot, like noord instead of nord. They supposedly speak a lot of French though, and English too. When in Germany it was nice to ask in German if people spoke English, and in France, French. But not knowing Flemish, did we ask in French if they spoke English or just broke down and went for English straight up, like a lame American?
Well online booking side-stepped that one.
jossel woke up and called a small B&B type place we found in our touristy book, in a small Rhine town called Bacharach. She had what she described as a tiny room for 40 euros, and we jumped on it.
We packed up, checked out and hopped on the local train to Koblenz, and from there down the Rhine to Bacharach. This stretch of the Rhine has a bunch of castles, and we snapped a few train-speed photos on the way.
Stairs going down in our hotel
Checking out, with the big-ole frame pack on.
Ok, this photo has no scenic value at all! What the heck jossel!
High-speed Rhine River pictures.
Raining here, sunny way ahead - typical Rhine/Mosel weather for us.
High speed castle touring, these are still train shots.
More hillside grape growin', up on the Rhine hills.
The castle on that hill has some crazy story about some Japanese guy buying it and wanting to renovate it to be some sort of Japanese tourist destination ala Disney, and then the town said "no freakin way" or something, and so now it is empty and sad.
Terraced vineyards on the hills - they kind of look abandoned and droopy now. But stuff was growing there.
Bacharach was another small riverside town with two roads along its long skinny length. Perched above it was another castle, this one now a hostel.
That's the hostel up on the hill.
The main drag of town.
The room in Bacharach was indeed small, but the bed was a 'full', and honestly, who needs a ton of room. We declared it perfect and went out for lunch. As we ate we checked the Rhine boat times - this was the real reason we came here. We noted that one left soon, and we were eating pretty close, so we ate fast - very un-european! and hit the docks.
The downside was we were just going to lunch and didn't have the camera. But getting an earlier boat was worth it. This was the most castle-choked part of the Rhine, and it was a nice leisurely cruise. The weather was somewhat typical of what we had been finding in Germany (although the locals didn't find it typical). It was bright and sunny, but dark clouds seemed to chase us everywhere, and without being over us we'd still get little drizzles of rain.
This is still from the train (hence the blurry tree), but I thought I'd split the pics up a bit. This is of the Loralei Rock on the left.
The Rhine much like the Mosel is flanked by hills covered in steep, terraced vineyards. And castles of course. The small towns that hug the Rhine have cathedral spires poking high above them, and trains whiz by on either bank.
We only went one way on the ferry, and hopped a train back. And didn't pay! On these local trains no conductor ever freakin asks for a ticket, even tho we sometimes see them. We spent like 45 euros ($63) on local trains between France and Germany on which no one checked our ticket. So this time we said "screw it!". And sure enough, no problem. Not that I advise it, since there IS a conductor, it is just on short train trips you probably won't see him.
The Bacharach B&B had wireless, with a really strong WEP key that was clearly rotated frequently. Kinda cool. So we had an easy time doing some research and deciding on our next stop. We had talked about a lot of things - Berlin, French Riviera, Belgium, Normandy, right back to Paris. We ended up deciding on Brussels, Belgium. We found a cool web site rates2go or something like that, that did last minute discount booking, and online booked a room. This was especially nice because the primary language in Belgium is Flemish, whatever the hell that is - all I know is they put lots of the same vowels together a lot, like noord instead of nord. They supposedly speak a lot of French though, and English too. When in Germany it was nice to ask in German if people spoke English, and in France, French. But not knowing Flemish, did we ask in French if they spoke English or just broke down and went for English straight up, like a lame American?
Well online booking side-stepped that one.