Rudesheim

We had an exciting day today in Rudesheim.  We arrived just after 9am and shortly afterwards were herded on to mini trains (carriages pulled by a fancy tractor basically) and taken for a short ride through the town to the gondola which goes up the hills covered in vineyards to the Niederwald monument. 





Rudesheim is famous for its wine and is very touristy - about 3 million people visit each year so its well set up for tourists.  The monument is being done up so it was nothing to look at really but the view from the top of the hill was stunning.

We left the group and the guide up there and took the gondola back down ourselves and wondered around the town.  It is a lovely quaint town - probably my second favourite after Melk in Austria. 





We saw a little museum titled the 'The Torture Museum' and Mal wanted to go in for a look...at first I was hesitant but then decided to give it a go as it talked about the inquisition and witches etc which I am interested in given many midwives were accused of being witches way back then...well it had to be one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen in all my life!  My god the descriptions, devices and drawings of what they did to each other back then was just appalling......fingers crossed I don't have nightmares tonight.


To cheer ourselves up again we then stopped off at a cafe to have a famous Rudesheim Koffee....very nice.  They make quite a ceremony out of making them...they put in 3 cubes of sugar, then a small sample bottle of German brandy, then they put a match to it and burn it off, then they pour in coffee, and finally put a huge scoop of whipped cream on top...absolutely delicious!!!



After bumping in to another couple from the cruise we decided to have an authentic German lunch in town rather than join the ship.  We ended up having sauerkraut and sausages .... infact it was really nice although if I had seen a photo of it before ordering I wouldn't have ordered it!

After setting sail at 2pm we then cruised the Rhine river on the way to Cologne and 'castle spotted'.  There are a lot of castles along this stretch of river and we managed to photograph each one even though the weather got progressively worse (family aren't you looking forward to our photo night when we get back!).   There were some beautiful towns along the way - just picture postcard perfect...and surprisingly a whole heap of caravan parks too! 

We had the captains farewell cocktail party and dinner tonight as its our second to last night on the ship so it was all fancy clothes on tonight.  We were then treated to classical music by 3 musicians who were just fantastic....we are getting very cultured on this cruise (as well as fat).

We have docked late in Cologne tonight - our last stop before heading to Amsterdam and disembarking on Sunday.