Trechtingshausen, Germany July 26, 2012

Walking From Trechtinghausen

We started today with another cold cut breakfast. Made two sandwiches to go, for lunch, and also brought some cheese wedges they had. Walk to the train station for the short ride to Trechtinghausen. Two stops later (10 minutes), we are there and decided to walk along a bike path towards our castle du jour. Rheinstein Castle is about 1.25 miles from the small train station. First, we walk along some nice gardens, then past a German RV park, and then right on the river as we pass one castle on the hill and then see ours. We cross the street and start another climb up to the castle.

Drawbridge

This castle was built in 900 and has had archbishops, empowers, and princes own it. The Hecher family bought it in 1975 to save it from an Indian religious sect that was going to buy it, and spent 19 years renovating it. We purchase the English guide for 1 Euro and it was very nice. The castle rooms are decorated from different periods and the gardens were really beautiful. We were able to climb up one tower and also saw a grapevine that is over 500 years old. Each castle we have seen so far has had its own personality and has shown us different aspects of medieval life. We walked back to the Trechtinghausen train station and waited about 20 minutes for our train. In Bacharach, we sat on the Rhine enjoying our sandwiches and then I decided to go for a swim. Carol kept saying go ahead just fall in, it’s not that cold. After a short delay, I fell back into the Rhine. The current is pretty strong and I could swim in place against it without going anywhere.

Carol is in the Rhine

It felt great and lo and behold, Carol wanted to get in and cool off. After all the talk she gave me, it took her forever to get in. She finally get in and we had a rare Carol in cool water moment. She usually avoids these kinds of things. We walked back to the hotel in wet clothes and shared a bottle of wine from the Rhine. Very good and relaxing. We walked back to town around 4:30 and saw a wine tasting place. I got Carol to go in and ask them if it was free in German. Despite her Part German heritage, her German pronunciation sounds like she grew up in New Jersey! No offense to the Jersey side of the family. She went in to say umsonst ( oom- zohnst) which means free and some German guy messed around with her saying it cost a lot. It was free and we tasted two really nice wines. The down side of the way we travel is we do not want to carry more stuff, so we passed on buying a bottle. We only buy what we will drink while settled and we are moving on tomorrow.

Roast Pork Cordon Bleu

We settled on a place to eat called Gasthaus Jagerstube and when we walked in there were only Germans in there. So, of course we sat down to eat. The food was excellent and we had two dark wheat beers with dinner. I did not know that there were dark wheat beers and they were very good. We shared as usual, one dinner of roast pork, red cabbage, and dumplings, the other pork cordon blue with a salad and fries. Feeling satisfied, we went back to our room to pack and relax. A definite advantage to traveling this way is replacing is quite easy and uneventful. We have stuff sacks for our different items such as clothes and pills and just load those in the packs. Bacharach has been very good to us and tomorrow we move on to Cochem on the Mosel River. CNC

Expenses                                                                                                                                                    5.40 E- Train to Trechtinghausen                                                                                                                 10E- Rheinstein Castle                                                                                                                           56E- Hotel                                                                                                                                              26.30E – 2 dinners and 2 beers                                                                                                            Miles walked – 8.66 miles                                                                                                                           P.S. We have been here a week today and it feels very comfortable, yet dreamlike in many ways.