Chilly Final Day in Bacharach

Greetings!  Matt and I have made it back home safe and sound by this point, but we figured for the sake of completeness that we should make a final post about our last day in Germany.  The day started off super foggy and COLD!  Even though it was sort of a downer to have bad weather on the last day, we really can't complain about the weather we've had on this trip...for the most part it has been awesome with very little rain!  Anyway, despite the cold and fog, we decided it was our last day and we were going to make the most of it!  Our plan for the day was to take a cruise along the Rhine River on one of the boats that run throughout the day.  According to our guidebook, the best hour of the cruise was between our home base (Bacharach) and a neighboring town, St. Goar.  Because of the fog, we decided to start off the morning with a quick tour around town on foot in hopes that the fog and chill would burn off later in the afternoon.  As we mentioned in yesterday's post, Bacharach is a sleepy little town without a bunch of "must-see" sites.  However, it is certainly quaint and the surrounding hillside vineyards are beautiful!  We covered most of the town in about an hour...

View of the morning fog on the river from our hotel room.

Still nobody around in the streets...just fine with us!

Interior of the town's requisite Catholic church.  Simple but beautiful.

Touring the streets...we loved the quintessential German style of these buildings (plus they're already preparing for Christmas!)

The town "wishing well" on the right with the vineyards in the background.

Ruins of Bacharach's old pilgrimage cathedral...pretty cool!

Self photo in the vineyards.

Standing at the top of a tower in the vineyards, view of the Catholic church behind.

Artsy timed self photo...cheesy but awesome (we know).

Timed self-photo in the vineyards...those babies were STEEP!

One of the original towers from the old town wall.

At this point it was time to get ready to head out on the river cruise, although clearly none of the fog or gloom had burned off, but it had warmed up to a balmy...

7.2 degrees C!  (or 44 degrees F!)  BRRR!!!

 We made our way to the boat dock to board our chariot for the cruise...

Although the boat had a nice (warm) inside section (where clearly all the people were hanging out, as no one is visible on the boat deck in the previous picture), we decided that we had embarked on this boat cruise to enjoy the scenery from the deck, regardless of the temperature.  It was chilly!

  But we were prepared!

The boat cruise along the Rhine River features some beautiful sites of the towns along the way.  Unfortunately, many of our pictures didn't come out that great due to the inclement weather.  We snapped a few shots along the way anyway of course...

After arriving in St. Goar, we had about an hour to kill before the boat back to Bacharach would depart.  Although we had originally envisioned wandering around and exploring St. Goar, at this point we were absolutely freezing and instead opted to sit at a lovely cafe and have some pastries and coffee to warm up! 

We did a bit of wandering in and out of some of the local shops to kill the remaining time before we headed back to Bacharach.  As luck would have it, the sun managed to break out for the boat ride back.  However, we decided that we were staying inside this time as we had braved it for the same sites on the previous trip!  We still managed to take a few pictures of the gorgeous surroundings.

Once we made it back to Bacharach, it had actually turned into a pretty pleasant day, so we decided that we would spend the remainder of the afternoon before dinner checking out the town's castle up on the hill.  The views from the hillside were amazing!

We conned another couple into taking our picture at the castle.

 Kim standing on the castle wall with the lovely Rhine River in the background.

Once we had finished checking out the castle, we decided to continue our walk around the town walls.  We decided to take the "scenic route."  We're pretty sure this walk is where that expression originated...the hillside vineyards all over the Rhine River Valley are so beautiful!  It made us feel like we were back in Napa, but with a lot more hills!

Once we made it over to the base of the vineyards, we had the brilliant idea to climb up to the walkway above by traversing the vineyards.  Apparently we had forgotten that timed self photo we took this morning where we commented about how STEEP these vineyards were!

It was a challenge, but we made it.  It was worth it, but we decided we would have to find another way down!  Haha!

Above, we took turns climbing up on a precarious ledge to get these pictures. As usual, the pictures don't do it justice! 

For the last time, Gute Nacht!

Love,

Matt and Kim