Bacharach and the Rhine

Think about a fairy-tale town: winding cobblestone streets, crooked little brightly painted houses, little hidden courtyards and wishing wells, with a castle overlooking it all. That’s what Bacharach looks like. Is it touristy? Sure, it is. But it’s not a theme park – it’s all real and just well preserved. Bacharach is one of several little towns in the wine country along the Rhine River that have castles. In the middle ages, every robber-baron with a castle could stop ships passing by and make them pay tolls in order to get through. Most of the castles were built in the 1100s to the 1300s and many are still standing. Some have even been converted into hotels. We did not stay in a castle. We stayed in the hotel Gelber Hof, which is like a big old house that your German great grandmother owns and decorated herself several decades ago. Here are a few shots of Bacharach:

We arrived on Saturday afternoon and took a boat ride north along the Rhine to St. Goar. We passed three towns and three or four castles along the way. We hiked up the hillside in St Goar to Burg Rheinfels castle, then strolled through town. Was it touristy? Sure, it was. It was also beautiful, in a story book sort of way that makes you wonder if it’s all real. Would we have been as impressed with these towns if the fairy tales we learned as kids took place on a tropical island or a desert or a big city? Maybe not – we envisioned princesses and castles and forests on a hillside. The brothers Grimm were German, after all.

Sunday we hiked up to the castle above Bacharach, Burg Stahleck, and down along the ruins of the old city wall. Then we rented bikes and took a fantastic ride along the Rhine toward the town of Bingen. The weather worked out for us too, not summery any more, but sunny and dry. Germans do a great job of making nice bike trails with a lot of good signage. This trail runs on and on for something like 35 miles, but on our creaky rental bikes we had a long enough ride to Bingen and back. On the bike ride we passed three more castles and took in the river views. We thought about climbing up to see another castle but our legs were against that idea and we had to listen. Besides, I think the castles are most impressive from a little farther away. You can pretend to be a ship captain approaching in his 14^th century vessel, getting his coins ready to toss in the basket at the toll booth. Ok, maybe it wasn’t quite like driving on the tollway in Chicago, but close enough.   

Now we are heading back to Hannover. Hannover does not look like a story book at all. But it is where Brian is waiting, wired on the 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew that Emily brought in her suitcase. And he is my highly caffeinated knight in shining armor.