[ Zoom Map ]

Rüdesheim, Germany
49° 59' N 7° 54' E
Jul 29, 2004 13:46
Distance 20km

Choose another map, showing:

• Belgium
• Germany
• France
• Europe (west)
• Mediterranean
• Europe
• Eurasia
• Transatlantic
• Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
• The World

Other entries in Germany

Rudesheim, Niederwalt , Limes, Rothenberg, Fussen

Text written in: English

Thursday, July 29 - A LONG DAY.
Naturally Cindy and I woke up first in St Goarhausen. We went downstairs for breakfast.
One table had coffee cups ready for us. And the plastic white bucket was back on the table! We felt sort of Twilight Zoned. Cindy put the bucket on the ground. The waitress put it back on our beautifully set table. Breakfast was again ham, cheese, some fruit, yogurt. All brought to the table. We guess it must be for refuse, and we dutifully put butter wrappers and tiny empty jam containers into it.

We wandered to "town". Got money from a bank machine. Saw where the ferry takes you to castle side of the river. Back to hotel. Raluca was up for breakfast. We told her to pack something for Felix who rarely gets up in time.

Our goal for the evening was Schloss Neuschwanstein. Along the way, we stopped soon at Rudesheim. It was a great little tourist town, although Cindy didn't like it. A main reason to stop was to get a converter plug for the "cradle" (battery charger) of my camera. We pulled into a camera / photography shop. The man said he didn't carry one but could make one for E3. OK. Then he brought out the cord from some discarded European style 220 volt appliance and he used abundant electrical tape to connect its loose ends to the prongs of my US 120 volt plug. The "cradle" of my new small Best Buy $500 Sony "Cyber-shot" model DSC-T1 with Zeis 2x zoom lens and 5 Megapixels was amazingly designed to be plugged right into either type of voltage. So all was good.

Meanwhile, Rudesheim's popularity is mostly based on the nearby Niederwalt Monument - featuring a 38 m high statue of "Germania" built between 1877 and 1883 to commemorate the Franco-German War (1870-1871) and re-establishment of the German Empire.

In 1884 a railway was built up to it through the vineyards that are common in this area on the mountainsides (Rhine wine, like we drank the night before).

Since 1954 a cable car system with 2-person gondolas has made the 10 minute journey, offering a great view of the vineyards, people and machines working in them, and of the vast Rhine valley.

The statue is impressive with other reliefs around its base. The monument prompted Felix to point out that World War I was the SECOND time in the memory of French citizens that Germany attacked France. That was probably why the Treaty of Versailles was so harsh on the German Republic.

We ate lunch at a nice cafeteria style restaurant near the monument. I ate a lot, including big salad, which I've come to have faith in for keeping me "regular". And a big beer, which I decided to drink regularly in Europe. Alles gut!

Cindy didn't take the cable car and was pretty bored by the time we returned. She had listened to English school children on tour talk about .....

More driving. Now we had to get to Fussen, in Bavaria.

Then, as if time were no problem at all, we stopped near Weisbaden at the Limes, which Felix wanted us to see, based on fond childhood visits there. You must use some imagination about the times and events that must have happened there. The limes - as I understand it - is a series of forts and walls built by the Romans in the 200's to keep out barbarian tribes. They form a crooked line for over 700 km through Germany between the Rhine and the Danube rivers.

I think we were at the outer "Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes", a defensive fortification with moats, ramparts, palisades, walls, towers and a large fort. It is one of the largest archaeological monuments in Central Europe.

Unfortunately, it closes at 6 pm and refuses admission to anyone past 5:30. We were there at 5:35 and - despite pleas of coming from the United States and willingness to pay for 25 minutes - we were kept out. This adherance to policy Felix blamed on the stupid German mentality. We did get to walk around the perimeter of the fortification and walk to the reconstructed wall of upright 8-foot wooden-stakes driven closely together in the ground and the high dirt bank designed for sentry overlook. Also, some of the eating and kitchen ruins - with heating vents - were outside of the main fort. We saw those.

Back to the car.

More driving. And it got dark. Felix thought it best to drive as much as possible at night. Roads clear.

I think we were traveling east on the A3, passing several km south of the town of Wurzburg when, fortuitously Felix chose to pull off at a nondescript exit (71) leading to the town of Eibelstaadt.

Betweeen Frankfurt am Main and Nurnberg along the A3

Driving into the small town, in the last light of dusk, somehow Felix spotted a doorway far from the street that he realized was a restaurant.

It's worth the trip. Alter Fronhof, Heumarkt 5, 97246 Eibelstaadt
They have a website: www.alter-fronhof.de

It's right next door to a church.

Alter Fronhof is everything you want a restaurant to be. Quaint, warm, friendly, moderately-priced, wonderful bright clean wooden ecors, a small crowd of diners (despite the lateness in this small town), great menu, good food. The proud owners struck up a conversation and soon were showing us the wine cellar, the huge antique banquet table, their daughters clothes drying on the upstairs porch!

The husband who served us - despite his limited English - was wonderfully able to get away with humor. I think this is the hardest thing to do in another language. For example,

As Cindy looked over the menu before ordering, she commented how she couldn't get so much food because she's so fat. The waiter looked at her skinny body and nodded, deadpan, "Yes".

Later he heard Cindy talking about how we want some authentic German food, but have had our fill of knockwurst. They had great other offerings. Sue had local lake fish. I had boar! And no one ordered it, but knockwurst was placed in front of Cindy, like an appetizer. By the way, it really was deliciously different than others we had.

We stayed longer than we ever imagined. Had coffee and dessert. Apple strudel with the best sauce.

We were sorry to leave but had far to go.

Despite how late it was, we pulled off to see Rothenberg, about 30 km northeast of Heidelberg. Raluca especially wanted to see it, because it is famous. Travel brochures describe it as "best preserved medieval town in Germany". Narrow town gates put us on cobble-stone streets with old half-timbered houses. We saw St Jacobs Church. Nearly all was closed and we went back to the highway.

A long way to go still.

When we were close to Fussen, we made a final Rast station stop. Felix needed the break. Cindy got upset at how much time Felix devoted to two dirty, tatooed ?Turks? who needed help figuring out how to get somewhere. She worries too much. We WERE in a rest station with other people and employees around.


We arrived in Fussen about 2 in the morning, and drove around looking for a place to stay. A Hotel wanted about E100 per room. We went back to a "hotel area", woke an old man in a 30 room pension who had rooms at E84 each. Wow! We began this vacation at E18 per person. Now we were at E42 per person.