Castle Ping Pong on the Rhine

 After leaving Rüdesheim, we immediately started seeing castles on the left side and the right side of the river. Since Roman times, rivers served as borders, and the Romans had managed to move quite far north on the European rivers.

Once the Romans were finished with all those fortifications, the counts and kings and prince electors took them over and rebuilt many of them to include large castles along with the fortresses. We also heard about many legends associated with some of the castles. Taryn is a great storyteller!

Here are photos of most of them. I'll update their names once I can get my map back. I'm writing this in the lounge at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, waiting for our flight home.

 

The Maeuseturm, or Mouse Castle

Ehrenfels Castle

Rheinstein Castle

The town of Assmannshausen

Reichenstein Castle

The town of Bacharach. As has been mentioned
in previous blogs, yes, the family of
Burt comes from here.

Pfalz Castle. Legend says at one time
knights kept their wives there while
they went of to battle, as it is on an island.

Schoenberg Castle

Gutenfels Castle

Many people were waiting to see the fabled Loreley, which is close to the end of 'castle alley'. The Loreley is a 430 ft high cliff at a rather treacherous bend in the river where many ships ran into rocks due to the current and the narrow passageway. German poet Heinrich Heine wrote a poem in 1824 where he called Loreley a siren singing from the top of the cliff while combing her golden hair with a golden comb. The sailors going through the area were so entranced by all of that, that they didn't pay attention to the river ahead of them, crashed against the rocks and perished.

 

Approaching the Loreley

 After Loreley, we had to go in to prepare for the evening, so we missed the last few castles. We did, however, see the Deutsches Eck, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine, while we were eating dinner. It seemed that the whole area below the huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm was set up for a summer festival, as there were tents all around. June 25-26 weekend seemed to be one where everyone, everywhere, was having some kind of a party or 'fest'.

 We were hoping that the weather forecast for Cologne on Friday would be wrong, but AccuWeather in Europe seems to have a better track record than at home.