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Wednesday 16th April
We woke this morning to a lovely clear blue sky but oh so cold in the early morning. After breakfast I went up to the top deck to do a few walking laps, all this beautiful food is catching up and clothes are decidedly tight!! The scenery is to die for as this morning we are cruising down the most romantic part of the Rhine.
We are to spend the morning cruising down this beautiful part of the river call the Rhine Gorge. No other river in the world has a greater concentration of castles or ruins of castles than this stretch of the Rhine River between Koblenz and Bingen. Steep slopes, many covered by vineyards and dotted with castles and picturesque villages. We also pass by the famous "Loreley Rock", where the Rhine River has its narrowest and deepest stretch, with tricky currents and treacherous rocks, many ships have fallen foul passing this jutting promontory. This has inspired German poets, Clemens Brentano and Heinrich Heine, to invent the 'Legend of the Lorelei' which told of a beautiful girl who sang seductive songs to lure mariners to their doom on the rocks at the foot of the cliff.
After lunch, we arrived at the delightful town of Rudesheim, above the town nestled into the steep hillside are grape vines and because this stretch of the river on this side faces south Riesling Grapes are grown, that the area has become quite famous for, here we are to moor for the next 4 hours.
We have selected the sky gondola ride from the 3 options we have for our on shore tour today. This proved to be a good choice as the day has turned out to be sunny and quite warm. We were taken into the little town of Rudesheim by a small touristy road train to the chair lift and met by our guide who organised our tickets and gave us a little history of the area. At the top of the chair lift is a famous monument called Neiderwald depicting 'Germania' in 1883. The views from the top are fantastic, you see far down the Rhine River in both directions.
Back down the chair lift we wander around the pretty town before meandering back to the boat. After dinner we had special entertainment in the lounge from a male and female duo who were excellent singing and playing all the songs from the 60's that 99% of the passengers would relate to. Almost everyone got up to dance and all enjoyed the music and the banter the duo had going on between them - a good evening.
Late night for us almost midnight when getting into bed but another lovely day.
The above picture is one of the many castles along the magnificent Rhine River Gorge.
Chat again soon.
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