Rhine River - Day 6 - Koblenz, Castles, and Ruedesheim

This morning we arrived in Koblenz, a very strategic city located at the confluence of the Rhine and the Mozul rivers.  At various times through history it was controlled by the Romans, the French, the Prussians, and finally Germany.

One of the first monuments we reached was three pieces of the actual Berlin wall.  The center piece shows the date of 17 June 1953 which was the start of the workers uprising in East Germany which eventually led to the building of the Berlin wall in 1961.  The date on the right one is 9 November 1989 which was when East Germany started allowing residents to travel to West Germany which eventually led to the wall coming down.

The next was a monument to German Emperor William I who was the emperor of Germany after it was seperated from Prussia in 1871.

 

 The beautiful lady next to a thumb sculpture.  The town is full of art work everywhere you go.

Another beautiful Catholic cathedral.

Another example of art work in the town.  This is a police officer taking a report of a lady selling vegetables in the square complaining that a local dog had peed all over her potatoes.  👨

Then we were off going further down the Rhine and passing through an amazing stretch of castles and small German towns and villages.  I won't bother with all the names of the castles because I couldn't even pronounce them if I wanted to. 👍

This first one is the only one along this portion of the Rhine which is still actively occupied.  Most of them have been converted into hotels, museums, or special event locations.

The river is down about 3 feet from where it is in summer time making it easy to see the treachery of navigating here.

Most of the castles have been rebuilt after the French destroyed almost all of them back in the 19th century.  Out of respect for historical places none of them were further damaged during either one of the WW's. A lot of them had been rebuilt by then and I give credit for nobody bombing them for no good reason.

 

Every village in Germany must have a church and a beer hall.  Because space was tight in this town they combined the two.  You actually go through the beer hall to get to the church and then exit back out through the beer hall again ... or just stop on the way and enjoy yourself. 😊

This is a huge area for vineyards.  All of them are placed on the side of a mountain facing south (for maximum sun exposure).  I can't imagine how difficult it must be to plow, plant, and pick the grapes.

But, back to the castles.

A rocky portion of the Rhine river.  The channel here makes it difficult for ships to pass each other going opposite directions.  Many times they just wait for the other way to pass first.

The old church with the new church.

The new castle on an island in the front with the old castle on the hill in the background.

The church next to the vineyard.

As the afternoon moved along it got more and more foggy which made picture taking more challenging but the end results gave a different perspective all together of the castles.

At 5 in the evening we reached Ruedesheim.  This is a beautiful, quiet, quaint town.  Far less crowded and bustling than the other cities we'd visited.  One of the main stops in town was the Siegfried Mechanical Music Museum.  This is an amazing collection of automated musical machines.  It's contained in a house built in 1542 which is an amazing place in itself.  It contains over 350 exhibits of mechanical instruments dating from the 18th to the 20th century – from delicate musical boxes to a gigantic piano-orchestra's.

The first we saw was a banjo player with drums on either side and a triangle down at the bottom left. 

I've got some movies of some of these pieces but I have to compress them down before I can post them.  Until then I'll just post pics.  All three figures in this one moved to the music.

They had a room dedicated to mechanical music boxes, some dating back to the 19th century.

This is the room that housed the music box display.  It's the chapel of the original house.  The paintings on the walls reflect various Christian scenes and dates back to the house being built in the 16th century.  The tiles on the floor were imported and actually date back to the 12th century.

Afterwards we strolled through the local Christmas Market before heading down to a coffee tasting which was included as part of the tour.  This was known as Ruedesheim Coffee which starts with brandy and sugar cubes which is then flambeed.  Then you add strong coffee and top it off with whipped cream and chocolate flakes.  Excellent drink but I don't think I could handle that sweetness through 2 drinks. 😜

Tina's been having a hankering from bratwurst so afterwards we found a local restaurant and ate off-ship for real German food.  No pics of that though.  Until the next post, hope you enjoyed Germany's castles.