Bacharach

The initial drive caused some concern as, one we learnt that we were about 1 ½ hr further north then we wanted to be and second, the GPS kept putting us on Highways. The van only goes 110 KM/H if it’s going down hill, in a straight line and has been on the highway for about 10mins. Everyone knows why Germany’s Autobahns are famous. So, once we got off and made the directions clear (the old fashioned way), we had a lovely drive next to the Rhine on the B9. On the route we passed St. Goar, Boppard and finally stopped in Bacharach. This small town of 2500 does not look like it’s changed since it became a town. That is probably why Julie and I loved it so much. This town also happens to be the best place in Germany to have wine, which had no impact on why we stopped here. We stayed in another Stallplatz for 6 euros; it was along the Rhine with the town and valley walls behind us. It was really cool being right by the water (Julie agrees but in the weather way). Like all the towns along the Rhine River, the castles are perched high up, on top of the valley walls. There are not many bridges, in fact the only one I have seen was in Koblenz and I think it was for Trains. A boat ride to St Goar (15km down the road) is 28 euro, one way and we didn’t bother looking into ferries. So we think we got a great view of the towns on the other side of the river, from the side we were on. Since we arrived in Bacharach early, we got into town to have a look around and grab some cash. This didn’t take very long, and we ran into so many tourists. Oddly, this has been the first place we have heard English speaking tourists and it’s a nice treat to actually understand them (somewhat). Julie picked up some money at the bank and we headed back to our Van for dinner. We hung out for a bit and we had hoped to skip paying for our parking spot, but the guy came knocking on our door anyway. I convinced Julie to head back into town at night for Ice Cream, we were both craving it for some reason. Man did this little town change. Besides seeing a few tourists and some lights on in bars it was a dead town. We meant to take pictures of the ice cream sundae’s we got at the Ice Cream shop, but we forgot only to remember once we were done. We tried an Amaretto and a Caramel one, caramel won out as the better sundae. The next morning we got started late, but were out of the van by 10. We walked back into town and visited the tourist office but before that we headed up to the castle. The castle is now a youth hostel and it offers great views of the town below and of the Rhine River, its only 17 euro for a night, not too bad. On our way down we passed a different route and decided to take it. This time we passed by an old church, it is left in ruins because it’s a monument as a reminder to the bigotry that once happened here many years ago. Basically a boy was killed and the church said that the Jews killed him and used his blood in a sacrifice, not true but you can imagine it caused some ongoing problems. We then went into the tourist office to see if they had any information on the surrounding towns along the Rhine all of our guide books only mention it as a lovely place to visit and the towns you should stop in at. The tourist office turned out to be a bust, the only info they had cost money. I did however stumble across a news paper written by the tourist board of Bacharach, so I grabbed this as it was in English and Julie and I went back to our van and read the articles in it, but not before calling home. It took Julie 30 mins to add money to the calling card so she wasn’t impressed. The news paper had many stories from Mainz to Koblenz, about the history and quirky traditions they have. Too much to get into here, but above I have mentioned some of what we learnt.