Scenic Tours Jewels of Europe #4

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Rudesheim am Rhein

We docked at Rudesheim and took a little "train" up to Siegfried's Mechanisches Musikkabinett, a mechanical instrument museum in a 16th century house. The floor tiles of the chapel were 15th century. There we saw and heard some amazing mechanical music machines - a whole orchestra in a box. It must take a lot of time to tune the instruments, especially the piano with 6 (or 8) violins.

Perhaps the building was as interesting as the instruments. The part of the museum that we were in had stone walls and vaulted ceilings. There were very old paintings on the walls and ceilings with knight's coats of arms on the ceiling in the Knights Room.

A short distance along the road from the museum was the cable car that took us up to the Germania monument built in 1871 to 1883. Wilhelm 1st unified the Germanic tribes. We did not think that this memorial, with its bronze female figure of Germania on the top was as effective as the one near Bielefeld. However the military scene was amazingly detailed.

We saw a tractor pruning of the vines by mechanically cutting off the tops and sides of the vines as it drove along between them.

We returned to Rudesheim in time for some shopping before the "train" took us back to the ship.

The boat turned from the Rhine into the Main (pronounced "Mine").

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