Bacharach and the Rhine Valley - June 26 & 27

Thursday morning we left Copenhagen early (7:42!) for an alll day train marathon to the Rhine valley in Germany. Our first train was the same we'd taken before, the cool one where the train gets on a ferry, although it wasn't quite as fun or exciting this time since we were really tired, and most of the seats on the train we reserved, so we had to keep moving around to find free seats. We did, however, have some chocolate on the ferry to cheer us up, and use the last of our Danish money! When we crossed into Germany, somehow the train got stuck in Puttgarten for 2 hours... some sort of technical malfunction, which was not good for us since we were already going to be on trains all day anyway! But we eventually got to Hamburg, then Frankfurt, and finally arrived in Bacharach around 8:00.

The Rhine River Gorge is really beautiful, there's lots of small towns and castles everywhere - our hostel being one of them! But before we hiked up the hill to the hostel, we looked for somewhere to eat in tiny Bacharach. Luckily we found a nice place and had some really good riesling wine and Schnitzel, which is a traditional German/Austrian food... its like breaded and fried pork or other meat...hard to explain but very tasty. And apple struedel for dessert - always a win! It was so nice to be able to afford a full meal after Scandinavia, which it think made us go a little overboard!

Since the hostel had a 10PM curfew/gate lock time, we started the hike straight up this mountain basically, and arrived at a Stahleck Castle not too much later, but we were hot and tired! It was really neat to be staying in a castle, it had a great view and really nice accomodation too! We had a 6 bed room with our own bathroom, and there was only two others there with us.

We bought a bottle of wine at the castle, which is actually made from the vineyards right at the castle, and drank it outside while we talked to a really nice family from Phoenix who were traveling also. It was a very relaxing evening after a long day, and it was really nice to meet people and talk to them for more than just 5 minutes! Not to mention we were in a castle!!! awesome.

evening view from the castle

our room was off the side of the castle (upper windows)

The next day we decided to see the area by bike, since the paths next to the river are really flat and it was just really pretty! There are lots of boats that people usually take down the Rhine, but we thought it would be more fun to bike, and it was great! We rented bikes for the whole day for like 10 euros (15ish dollars), complete with basket and everything, and the hotel where we rented them let us store our bags there too - perfect!

Biking was so nice, we went two towns down through Oberwiesel to St. Goar, and even stopped at a cool playground for a bit, which I'm always a fan of! In St. Goar we had lunch and then turned back towards Bacharach, we weren't exactly sure how far we had been because our map didn't have a scale, but we got to see a ton of cool castles, and the river was pretty and it had taken about 2 hours to get to St. Goar so we figured we should head back! We stopped off on the side of the road and went down the steep hill to the river and waded in the water for a bit, and I took a ton of pictures as we rode back (safe, I know!)

Kasey biking like a pro!

We had pizza for dinner and more good Rhine Valley wine in Bacharach before we gathered up our stuff and headed to catch our train south to Freiberg. All in all, the Rhine Valley was beauiful and really fun. When we asked later, it turns out we had biked about 22 miles! Crazy! There we a lot of other people biking too... apparentely its a big deal to bike through Gemany on vacation, and I think it would defintiely be really fun to do - they are set up well for it, and you get to use the cool bike saddlebags for all your stuff - awesome!!