Day Trip: St. Goar and Rhinefels

Last time I posted about visiting a castle, Burg Eltz, I made the mistake of including it as part of the Rhineland, which is misleading because it's technically in the Moselle Valley. Speaking of castles, we took a short trip today to visit some nearby ruins in St Goar on the Rhine River.

When we went to Burg Eltz, Greg was a little disappointed at how well the castle was preserved. I think he was hoping for a little more of something eerie and closer to what you would see on Game of Thrones. Rhinefels seemed to be just the place!

(As a side note, I got those Ellen Tracy jeans for $15 because they had a pen mark on them that was easily removed with alcohol. Yes, I'm that cheap.)

Rhinefels was a 12th century fortress that is now just ruins and a network of tunnels leading to different areas of the former castle. Most of it requires a flashlight. Even with flash and in night mode, my camera told me over and over that it couldn't take pictures in the deep tunnels because of lack of light. Every time I did take pictures, the strange swirls of light coming from seemingly nowhere were pretty creepy, especially when you are deep in the tunnel with no view of the end on either side, shuffling your feet to keep from tripping. In the pictures, everything looks so bright, but in real life it was pitch black with a tiny little speck from the LED flashlight I luckily grabbed last minute from our desk. Greg was trying to scare me on purpose by running far ahead or shinning the flashlight through some of the holes in the tunnel wall where you could see the thickness of the walls.

First set of stairs to nowhere.

Light rays reflecting off the water trickling through.

Pharmacy

Greg has a lightsaber.

"Are you coming or not?"

Salthouse under the battery tower.

The scariest, most narrow tunnel we found... and have no idea what it was far.

Greg flipping out coming out of another stairway to nowhere.

It rained for about half the time we were there. There aren't many places to hide from the rain except in the tunnels. Even with the rain, the scenery was amazing.

The castle on the left side of the picture is "Maus"

The castle shown above is "Katz"

St. Goar (right) and St. Goarshausen (left) separated by the Rhine.

We actually had a ton of fun, even in the rain. We both agreed that Rhinesfel is a great, close place to take any of our friend or family who may visit. It's historic, it's beautiful and as a bonus, it's pretty cheap at only 4 Euro to spend a day exploring. Greg also thought it was a much better "castle" than any of the others we've seen because it was so bare and you were able to see much more of it than just a few well thought out rooms. The drive was also pretty simple and beautiful, running along the Rhine the whole way. There are riverboat tours that you can take from Rudesheim to St. Goar. The town of St. Goar was very beautiful as well. It's small and somewhat touristy, but everyone was very friendly and it was one of the few places we have encountered where people seemed excited to practice their English. Where we live, it's almost a necessity for the locals to know English, but they do not like to speak it!

Castle and toll station on the way.

Motorized "train" waiting in front of the clock maker to take people up the steep hill to Rhinesfel. We didn't take the train, we just walked.

Church as we walked back down the hill.

Little strip of St. Goar.

I apologize if this image heavy post almost destroyed your computer like it did to mine. 24 megapixel pictures take forever to load.

I leave you with this picture of Greg holding my umbrella as a reminder. Even when your husband insists over and over that it's not going to rain and then laughs at you for running into the store to buy an umbrella at the gas station, bring a freakin' umbrella! Best $10 ever spent, even if it's just for this picture.