Thursday, June 4, 2009

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2009 - OBERWESEL, GERMANY

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2009 – 144/1— OBERWESEL, GERMANY

The hotel is so nice that we decided to spend a second night and enjoy some more of the Rhine Valley. It is about an hour’s drive to the airport from here and much nicer than an airport motel! Breakfast is the typical German buffet spread along with scrambled eggs upon request. They have a coffee/espresso machine that is a masterpiece. You place your cup under the nozzle, press the button for the style of coffee you want and it grinds the beans, makes the coffee and even adds milk if so desired; all in about one minute. It is huge and Dick supposes that Carolyn will not allow one in the kitchen at home. More is the pity.

After some more blog work, we head out to drive the west bank of the Rhine up river toward Mainz. It is the last day of the three day weekend and the crowds in the towns are large but the traffic on the river-edge road is not too bad. We first stop to see some of the 16 remaining watch towers and St Peter's Church in Oberwesel, a quiet little village on the river below where we are staying..


We continue up river enjoying the nice river views,and stop for a visit in Bacharach another nice village where we walk around and visit the church. It was built in the mid 1200’s and is very well maintained. Some years ago, when the church was doing some work on the inside, original wall paintings were discovered.They had been covered over in the 1500’s when some interior changes were made. Right behind the church is the ruin of a cathedral. At Bingen, we take a car ferry across the river for €4.50 and head back down stream passing Ludwig's toll castle, the only one in the middle of the river. Next we climb up abovw the river to see the bend that was made famous by the Loreley.Finally we stop to see Castle Marlburghigh on a hill above Brauhach. Just as we enter the castle gate,we discover and antiquarian shop selling single pages from VERY old books. Most of their stock is from 500 hundred to 1,000 years old. The shop is liquidating a private collection that was put together in the late 1800’s. There is a complete Bible, in German, printed in the 1500’s for €3,500. We do not buy that! We do acquire four single sheets: two beautiful and colorful handwritten pages from bibles of the 1200’s, a woodcarving hand colored print of one of the German walled villages and a beautiful handwritten page from a Book of Prayer which we plan to have nicely framed and hang in our home as part of our art collection. Looking through the collection was worth the trip it was so interesting!

We do not see the castle as it is by guided tour, in German, only and will take an hour. That is too long and we reserve that for a future visit. We now head back to our hotel,take a small 10 car ferryat St Goar
Back “home” Dick takes Carolyn down to the wine cellar for another tasting round. They have some wonderful white wines. We have dinner earlier tonight since we are trying to get packed. We split a plate of schnitzel with the wonderful mushroom sauce and pan fried potatoes with a small side salad and even that was a huge amount. One last taste of apple strudel and we are done!

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