Cologne, St. Goar, Bacharach 8-31, 9-1

After Berlin, I jumped on a night train and woke up further west in Cologne on the Rhine River.  Took a train ride and a boat ride before arriving in Bacharach

Cologne had a car show.  Oh yeah, they also had a big Gothic Church.  My new climbing partner Kamila and I went hiked the top, looked around and then got out of town.

We took a train down the Rhine and passed a bunch of castles.  Back in the early 1100's or so, Germany was a bunch of feudal states, each governing there own small pieces of land.  Some of these feuds owned pieces of the river and charged taxes for all boats going up and down the Rhine.  If you pay, you help support the local castle building fund, if you don't you get a close up view of the inside of a well.  We stopped in St. Goar, this is main street, and you can see the castle in the distance.  The cool thing was this cafe's owner let me ditch my bag in his place so I wouldn't have to lug it up the hill.

Between the Cologne Church and climbing this castle, I think Kamila and I did about 2000 feet of vertical.  Who said vacationing was easy?  I had a much more difficult time than she did because I am way older and way fatter. BTW - she turned me on to these milk, fruit, vitamin things so now I don't have to take my awful tasting multi-vitamins, rad.

After St. Goar, I jumped on a boat heading south, upstream further down the Rhine passing the dangerous Loreley mermaid rocks and a bunch more castles.  I think this one was called Phulz or something. More fascinating was the toilet, it is the small middle outhouse on the same level and between the two larger wooden rooved overhangs. Recently, they just cleaned the stains off the walls, yuck. No flushing here, just a hole.  Back in the day you were supposed to yell before cleaning out your chamber pot.  This one didn't even have a chamber pot and if I was in there, the last thing I would be thinking of was yelling first.

I spent two nights in Bacharach whose name comes from Alter of Bachus.  A lot of Rhine wines around. This town was happening because the boats rested here after getting by some dangerous rocks upstream.  Many of these boats were filled with wine which was traded here in this cute town.

Cool, vinyards above a mid-evil town.

Here's the townscape of Bacharach. Yup they had a castle too and today it's a youth hostel

Here's my crib in Bacharach, the Kranenturm.  Bike Rentals down the street, and Rick has stayed here a couple of times this year.  I did see a bad ugly American incident in the hotel but all the other Americans apoligized for this one loud gringo.  Fatima, the owner, is a very spunky lady and helped me get set for Munich.  Btw - this hotel is built into the old town wall.