On the boat ride up the Rhein River, you can potentially see about 30 or more castles lining the banks. This was just a half of a day’s trip. It was pretty phenomenal. Honest to goodness.
Most of these castles were constructed in the early 1000s.
And each is so jam-packed with stories, history, intrigue…. as well as heroism, heraldry, corruption, and deceit.
Pick any one. For instance, we sailed past Reichenstein Castle , or in German… Burg Reichenstein. It is in the upper Middle Rhine Valley.
Now this thing still stands, mostly in tact…. on a mountain spur on the eastern slope of the Bingen Forest. Nonetheless. It is first seen in historical accounts … in about 1213.
So. In 1213… This guy named Philipp III von Bolanden was appointed “castellanus”. I think that means Ruler. He got this title… like from some dude at an Abbey at Aachen. I think the guy at the Aachen Abbey was hoity-toity too.
Anyway… supposedly, the castle was captured in 1253. Now, I could bore you senseless with the factoids about all of this. But the long and short of it…. people fought, castle lost, castle destroyed. And later rebuilt by wealth.
So it goes with many of these majestic, and ancient structures.
We wiggled our way up the river to a town called Cochem. Same deal there, really. It is the largest hill-castle on the Mosel River. It is beautiful and awesome, and mysterious.
However… like many of the others… the castle we see today towering above the valley is not the genuine article. That 12th century castle had a long and colorful history…… right up until French King Louis XIV had his troops obliterate it in 1689.
A guy from France, and a rich guy at that… had it rebuilt in the mid 1800s. His name was Louis Ravene.
And there, my friends, is just a little chunk of our day today.
Again, we have had this uncanny knack for finding pizza. We had it for dinner again. This trip, we have managed to consume a great amount of those pies. But they have been some of the best that we have ever had.
Europe has Coca-Cola Light in these great little glass bottles like we used to get when we were kids. I love this, to no end.
Tonight, sleep sounds like such a glorious thing.
As with all the other good fortune of this day, and our lives. Sensational. Guten Nacht fur heute.