Sunday, July 5, 2009

The Rhine River Experience - Boats Trains & Automobiles...

So we take off for the Rhein River...  it is only about an hour away from us... incentive to come and visit huh?  The Rhein River is the major river in Germany and is the source of many of the vineyards of Germany and hence their wines...  mostly white Reislings, but many other grapes as well...
This is the ferry that took us across the Rhein, for those of you familiar with the ferry at Galveston/Bolivar peninsula, it is way different!  It takes only about 5 minutes to get across and each ferry holds about 15-20 cars.  It will also leave with only 2 or 3 cars on it!!!!  
We took a Gondola up to the top of a hill over many of the vineyards.  Nanny PK is visiting and she rode with Emma...


The vineyards below...
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at the top, we took in the sights of the Rhein below, there was also an Aviary which takes care of injured Birds of Prey such s Eagles and Owls.  They take care of injured birds until they are ready to be released back into the wild.


From the Gondola, there is about a 45 minute walk through the forest/vineyards which has several castle ruins.




Also along the way were wild Raspberries!  We picked them and ate them as we walked!



At the end of our trek, there was a deer park where we stopped and fed deer... most of them were fawns but there were a few with some pretty impressive new antlers!
Then we took a chair lift down from the hill to another village.

PK did brilliantly despite her fear of heights...  I did too... although, it was a bit scary for me as well...
Then we took a boat up the Rhein which is peppered on either side with vineyard and castle ruins.   I think there was a castle every 10 minutes!
Once we reached the end of the Rhein (or at least the section of it that we were on) we opted to come back by train, the boat would have taken almost 3 more hours where the train only took about 25 minutes...
on the train...   we ended up going to Mass in a German church before heading back home.  A wonderful (and tiring) day!!!

1 comment:

Laura said...

Hi! I just found your blog thanks to Google (LT COL promotion party).. We're an Army family living in Stuttgart, and also hail from Texas. I'm from Austin, and my husband is from Silsbee, though we haven't lived in TX for a lifetime. :o)

I see that you mom lives in Silsbee; any chance you graduated from Silsbee High? My husband Bob Sims was in the '89 class, and he has two younger siblings, Jim & Cookie. Bob's mom taught at Kountze Middle School.

Great pictures of your trip up the Rhine River. I hope to update our blog soon, but with 3 kids, it's tough. Hopefully I'll get one up tonight. Maybe.

Hope your day is great. Our 'house of many small children' is having fun playing inside on this rainy day. My email is laura(dot)ann(dot)sims(at)gmail(dot)com