Thursday, June 18, 2009

Day 2 - The Land of a Thousand Castles and a Little City Called Brussels.

As I mentioned earlier, Bacharach is nestled in the Rhine River Valley.  On Day 2, we traveled a few villages south (or maybe it was east) and jumped on a cruise boat to take a trip up the Rhine River to get views of the historic medieval castles that line the river banks.  I won't show all of the pictures I took (believe me, you should be glad-there were several), but you'll get the general idea. The castles are huge, and the castles are gorgeous.  It was like traveling through a real-life storybook.  I expected kings and princes and queens and princesses to appear any minute.  See for yourself.


There was a different castle every mile or so.


The banks were very steep and most were blanketed with vineyards.


Brad is reading the notes we printed by Rick Steeves, the great traveler.  We had notes about every castle along the river. It was quite the history lesson...Brad was in heaven.


Not a castle, but beautiful nonetheless.





Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!  It was about a 2-hour tour/cruise, and I could barely soak it all in. The cruise ended, and we went back to Bacharach, grabbed our bags and headed to Koblenz to catch the train for Brussels.  

Our couch surfing host, Christian, met us at the train station in Brussels.  There was a jazz festival going on that weekend, and Christian was kind enough to walk us around the city and show us the sights.  Again, it was beautiful.

It was about 10pm when we arrived. The sun still had not set completely. This continued to amaze me the entire trip. You can see the stage set up in the pic above...we don't know who the band was. They were a part of the music festival.  It was a great night to see Brussels...lots of locals out and about.

Beautiful buildings in the town center.

Grand.


Lots of people eating mussels in Brussels.

We are so glad Christian took the time to show us around and share a little history of the city. It definitely would have been nice to be here more than 2 hours. Next time...next time...

Bacharach, the Rhine River Valley, and Brussels. Day 2.


4 comments:

  1. Whew! What a day! I'm glad you updated. I can't wait to see what we did the next day!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dang...you covered a lot of ground in two days! Mussels in Brussels? Awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I just IMed Holly that we need to take a trip to Germany because I like castles, beer and sausage-type meats. Isn't that funny?! I thought it was. You know what else is funny? Mussels in Brussels! hahahahahaha!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'll go back to Germany any day!!! And I'll even eat mussels in Brussels.

    ReplyDelete