Castles on the Rhine River

I wanted to add a few things about what Peter mentioned in his blog. First off check out this pic. Our hostel castle is on the top left hand side…

and it was not an easy, short hike, in fact it pretty much sucked with a 30 pound pack. I couldn’t walk stairs after hiking up and down that thing twice.

I have legs of steel now.
The castle hostel is called Stahleck Castle and was built around 1100. I didn’t see any ghosts though.


Peter mentioned some of these towns are known for Riesling and man was it good wine. We did buy a few bottles. Here’s a pic of our friends we made…some were from Seattle.

Needless to say I drank too much and had one hell of a morning. By the way there were a million kids at this hostel, but I can’t blame them as a kid that would have been the coolest thing ever, and it still is as an adult. Here’s a pic of our tiny room.



So hiking down the hill made me feel a little better. We hopped on a ferry and took a tour of the Rhine River…there are so many castles you could spend a whole vacation castle hopping. In fact I would love to do that in the future.



Peter and I got off on the wrong ferry, so we were stuck for a while in a town where no one spoke English and then eventually made our way to the town of St. Goar to explore the ruins of Rheinfels Castle and Fortress.


This castle had much history of renovation and family ownership. Apparently much of the castles along the Rhine River were set up as toll castles. That’s how most of the castle renovations were funded. Anyway you can read more about it here (insert link). The ultimate ruin of the castle was the French blew it up. I bought a book about the castles on the Rhine River and it seems the French blew up a lot of castles. Shish…those French.



There’s a cute outdoor market in St. Goar. Peter bought a chuck of meat and a bottle of Riesling.

Peter and I found a place to stay in Germany for Oktoberfest, so we leave in the morning for Munich.

Ok…it’s morning and we barely made the train……we had to take two trains to Frankfurt and there we ran like hell with our packs on…I have to say that was the funniest thing ever. Peter looked like a turtle struggling to run…..I’m sure I looked the same, but I couldn’t stop laughing. We were the last people to make it on the train, and if Peter hadn’t made it a few seconds before me, we would still be waiting for another train.

So first class rocks, we take back what we said earlier, that we would rather pay less and have 2nd class. Nah we like 1st class, plus it’s less crowded, better seats and toilets and we have plugs for our computer.