The day dawned with lovely blue skies; something we had not seen for about a week and perfect for a cruise on the Rhein! We caught the KD ferry and said good bye to Rudesheim.
This part of the Rhein River is known for its castles.
We saw one after another, after another. Mike thought I must have seen enough castles by the end of this trip, but I don’t think you can ever see too many castles. 😉 They are all unique. We saw 15 during our 3 hour trip. Some were just ruins:
While others were still in use.
The ferry made quite a few stops.
And we went past a lot of “traffic” on the river, mostly long barges and long cruise river boats like this one:
We eventually got to our stop, the small village of Braubach at the foot of the Marksburg castle:
There’s a bit of a story as to how we ended up here. Mike had booked train tickets from Koblenz, which is the next place the ferry goes to on the Rhein River. But the accommodation that was available there wasn’t great, plus it was a bigger town, so I looked at the village just before it where we could catch a train to Koblenz. Braubach was the village. After reading reviews about it, I knew it was THE place to go. It even had a castle to visit. That settled it. 😉
We walked a couple of minutes from the river and found our accommodation in the cutest little street:
No way! This place was SO beautiful! This was the view from our window:
It was unbelievably cute! 🙂 All from the sixteenth century at least.
Then, we went exploring!
I think this had to be the cutest little village we’d seen so far, and there were almost NO tourists here – except perhaps for 2 kiwis, which of course added to its charm. 😉
As Cathy said when I send her a snapchat of here, it was like a movie set, but this was all REAL!
Eventually we ended up back where we were staying.
Then we made our way up to the Marksburg castle! We guessed that this sign said uneven steps. 😉
A half hour walk up the hill and there it was.
This is one of the most original medieval castles on the Rhein, built around 1117 and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
There were 4 doors to enter the castle, for security. This door used to be bigger, for knights to enter on top of their horses.
This is where the horse and rider came into the castle. The ground has been hewn straight out of the rock, it looked like you were in a cave:
The coats of arms on the wall are from each of the families who had lived in the castles since the 14th century.
This is the steps where soldiers would go up the wall to shoot at enemies and defend the castle.
Inside, this is how thick some of the walls were; thick enough to put in seats and a table!
In the “bathroom” there was even a sink and running water. Medieval style.
The Queen’s bed. Medieval style.
And toilet. Medieval style.
The banqueting hall:
In the chapel.
Going upstairs in the tower, they deliberately made the steps uneven and narrow, so if the enemy was trying to get down in a hurry after scaling the walls, they couldn’t get through easily. Especially if they had armour on. 🙂
The tour of this castle was excellent. We both enjoyed it very much, it was one of our favourite castles that we visited because of the authenticity and original condition of much of it, and the history surrounding it. Highly recommended.
The we walked back down the hill to the Village of Cuteness. 🙂
I think this may have been my favourite place to visit in Germany. And we’ve been to some pretty cool places! 🙂
Enjoyed the pictures! It was like a trip back through time!
Glad you enjoyed them, it is very much like going back in time!!!