Friday December 13th, 2024

Today was a 2 port day. One in the morning and then scenic sailing in the afternoon and a port in the evening. We arrived in Koblenz before sunrise since the sun does not come up until 8:30am.

Our boat as we head out on our morning excursion.

Koblenz is the meeting point of 2 rivers, the Mosel river joins the Rhine river. There is a huge statute to Wilhelm the second at the junction of the 2 rivers.

The Angel is next to Wilhelm and is smaller depicting that Wilhelm is the leader but has God at his side. The land the statue is on is all reclaimed land that used to be under water.

We did a walking tour around the monument and the the city and there was a small Christmas market in the city which mostly had food stalls but not much else. It was another gray and cold day.

Views from Koblenz.

As someone pointed out to us the Christmas markets are one about eating, drinking and socializing and not so much about shopping.. 70% of the booths are food or drink.

We had lunch on board and then the afternoon was scenic sailing off the Rhine. This is the section of the Rhine that has multiple castles and scenic towns. It was about 2 hours of sailing and commentary. What was fun was watching all the people head up top the top deck out in the open to see the views and within 15 minutes they were back in the lounge complaining about how cold it was. We stayed in the lounge and never went upstairs because it was so gray and overcast.

The town below and the castle above. Most of these castles are now high end hotels.

The Rhine is lined with vineyards

Many of these castles date back to the 13th century.

At 5:30p we arrived in Rudesheim, which is a quaint little town along the Rhine. It is mainly a tourist town. They have a large Christmas market which was quite festive but nothing we had not seen before. We walked all around town and the markets enjoying the ambience.

Gives you an idea of how crowded it is.

One booth which fascinated me was set up by the postal service and it was lost our unclaimed packages.

They charged from 10 to 25 euros for a mystery package. We assume that all of them had to have been opened and inspected so they put a monetary price on it and the resealed. I saw lots of interest in the both but never saw any actually buy something and open it up while we were there. I was tempted but fought the urge.

We found a place for dinner and drinks but it was very crowded and we did not think we would be able to find a seat. Some nice waitress took pity on us and told us we could sit in a booth that was marked reserved because the people who reserved it were not coming in until later. We had beer and Kathy had tomato soup and I had goulash which was excellent. It was so good that I had to get seconds.

We made it back to the boat around 10pm after taking another spin though the markets.

We sailed from Rudesheim at midnight.