It would be rüdesheim not to

We were going to wake early this morning and get down to breakfast early and take in the scenery from the lounge with accompanying commentary by the Tour director, Wes.

Instead we woke at 9am and flipped back the curtain to this lovely scenery flying past…

We missed most of the commentary and had to join the late riser breakfast… lucky there was no early tour.

Apparently growing the grapes facing this direction (can’t remember which one) is the best in this climate for riesling.

Notice the different types of holiday homes here… the castles may be on top of the hill, but the vans are mobile and closer to the river, so…. you be the judge.

Seinfeld anyone?

Today’s cruising took us past the Loreli… a hill which is connected to The Siren on the Rhine – The legend of Lorelei

We got passed safely as far as I can tell.

Our stop today was the town of Rüdesheim. Famous for it’s Mechanical Musical Instrument Museum and it’s cable car that takes you to the Niederwald Monument – it was built in the late 1800s to commemorate the unification of Germany.

Jen and I did both these activities on our last jaunt 14 years ago, so we just pottered around the town…

The ship was docked all the way at the last jetty, so it was about a 20 min walk into the town – however it was on a flat smooth(ish) path, so we thought we’d take the walker and then Me Jen could sit when she needed and I could push when it was all too much.

Review: The walker is not great over the cobblestones and as we found out on our way back to the boat… all it takes is one little crack in the path, the wheel got stuck and awkwardly spitting me Jenny out of the front. She sort of flung out in slow motion, but wasn’t hurt and did still have the wherewithal to accuse me of maybe doing it on purpose… as if Jenny breaking another limb, in a foreign country helps me in any way. Luckily we haven’t been tucking into the buffet so Jen was easy to pick up. Then, we dusted ourselves off and got back to the boat in one piece.

Once all were back on board (Cabin 204 was late back! There’s always one) we headed off enjoying the action on the water. We watched this person try their hand at hydrofoil surfing being towed behind a boat doing about 5knots – max.

It was a surprisingly glorious day today… Clear blue skies and not cold at all, which made for this beautiful sunset… It even makes the factory to it’s left fade into the shadows – quite literally.

Well done Rüdesheim am Rhein. Well done.