Our Castle Road Trip - section 2 of 3

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Our Castle Road Trip: section 2 --- the photos that correspond to the text are numbered etc. through to

(grab something to eat, sit down and relax --- there’s a bit of reading ahead)


Friday:
Today we were awoken by the sun at 7am, and surprisingly feeling quite good, after spending the night in the car. We examined the map, tried helping a guy who didn’t speak any English with some directions, and got our bearings before heading off.
Our journeys today would take us along the Rhine River from Koblenz.
Our first stop was the first castle we saw on our side of the river, it was Scholss (German for Castle) Stolzenfels , where we get a guided tour in German . This castle is still privately owned and has been restored for tourism purposes .

From there we headed further upstream where we came across Burg Rhinefels , this castle was in ruins since 1796 thanks to the French, and had never been restored. Visitors were able to freely explore the ruins at their own pace and discover all its hidden secrets , many of which we couldn’t discover as we didn’t have torch with us . We explored the ruins like kids in a playground for nearly 3 hours before deciding there were many more castles to see and not enough time to see them all .

So from here we headed upstream again where we came across Burg Rheinstein . We parked the car and looked at the information board to see that the castle closed in 25 minutes. With a mammoth hill ahead of us , we raced up the path to get to the top expecting them to deny us entry. But instead the lady at the gift shop let us enter and told us we could have look around, unguided as long as we liked . This castle, the last one for the day, made it to the top of our favourites . It was a small family home type castle, that had been purchased by some famous opera singer dude and restored for tourism purposes. It was a really nice homey feeling castle , with replicated and original furniture . We explored the castle , being the only people there as they had locked the gates and eventually decided to let them close up shop for the night . Heading back down the hill and to our car.
From here we needed to find a ferry to get us and our car across the river so we could head back to Koblenz. So we headed to Bingen and boarded the ferry.

Driving along side the river again , heading back to Koblenz we stopped to happy snap the scenery . We arrived in Koblenz at approx. 8.30 where we came across Kurtürstliches Schloss . We stopped to have a look before driving to Altstadt where the two rivers, the Mosel and the Rhine meet. Here we found Deutsches Eck , some dude on a horse, a really big statue from World War II.
From here we decided to leave Koblenz town centre again and find our next resting spot to spend the night.

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