CASTLES ON THE RHINE

"The scenery castles are beautiful.  Got off the boat in St. Goar."  (Excerpt from Grandma Theresa's journal)

There are many people who love the scariness of fairy tales and is probably a reason that the TV show "Once Upon a Time" is so popular, as well as Grimm's Fairy Tales.  I, on the other hand, enjoy more the romantic aspects of fairy tales and was eagerly awaiting seeing castle after castle while cruising the Middle Rhine.

Our ship left Rudesheim and the first castle we saw was Rheinstein Castle, located near the town of

Trechtingshausen and built originally in 1316. The next castle we saw was Reichenstein Castle (also known as Falkenburg) and it was built in 1100.

Then we saw Sooneck Castle, which is located near the village of Neiderheimbach.  These first 3

castles were all located on the left side of the ship.  And seeing castle after castle, continued for our 3 hour ride down the Middle Rhein.  We also saw the famous Lorelei, a huge rock formation which has various tales linked to it, including the one about a beautiful female sitting on the cliff, distracting ship men with her beauty causing them to crash.

I just wished that Grandma Theresa had written more in her journal about these castles.  It would have been nice to have gotten more thoughts from her. She did see them in the opposite order that I saw them too, as she was going upstream while I went downstream.  Perhaps she just enjoyed them so much "beautiful scenery castles" was all that needed to be said.