Rüdesheimer Weihnachtmarkt

Vineyards up the hillside in the Rhine valley.

Wednesday morning and the snow still lay around “crisp and deep and even”. Our driver, John, gave us an unplanned option of how we wanted to travel to Rudesheim. We could go the boring Autobahn route or we could travel over the mountain between the Moselle and Rhine valleys. The latter would entail a ferry crossing of the river Rhine at the princely sum of 2 Euro’s each return. Luckily everybody agreed so we had a fantastic trip over the mountains to St Goarhausen.

St Goarhausen with vineyards on the hill behind

This is a busy shipping highway. The Lorelei statue is at the end of the spit by the sheltered harbour.

A view down the Rhine Valley.

The trip up the mountain was, for those that are familiar with the road, like driving over the Rimutaka hill from the Hutt Valley to the Wairarapa. John, our driver took it all in his stride and made it seem so easy. The only difference was that there were lovely little villages along the way. Going over the top so to speak and it was white as far as the eye could see.

German architecture around Rudesheim.

Product of Finland with a lady in traditional dress.

At St Goarhausen we caught the ferry across to St Goar and onto Rudesheim via a visit to the Lorelei cliff high above the river Rhine. The ferry only took about 3 minutes but was a real spectacle in the way the skipper manoeuvred the ship in the fast flowing river. The embarkation ramp latches down onto the landing dock and as soon as it was lifted the ship was caught by the current. Mid stream the skipper did a pirouette and turned the boat ready to dock on the other side.  The ship virtually travelled sideways all the way across. Driving the ship into the dock and holding under power until the ramp was lowered and locked onto the dock again. John said that he had never seen the skipper miss the dock.

The local hotel in Rudesheim.

The centre of Rudesheim's Xmas market.

At Rudesheim the streets are mostly narrow pedestrian alleyways running between 2 main streets where all the market stalls were set up. The town was much more interesting than Cologne in that it was more traditional in architecture although the church had been destroyed during WWII and since rebuilt. The stall holders were from all over the world,Finland, Mongolia, Holland, Belgium just to name a few which we never saw in Cologne. However Cologne does have 7 markets of which we only saw one.

Narrow cobbled streets in Rudesheim.

Hot chestnuts.

Xmas tree decorations.

After dinner we took a 2 hour cruise from outside the hotel up and down the River Moselle. Being dark there wasn’t much to see but the main intention was down a few steins and be entertained by a local musician whose repertoire was somewhat limited, at least he tried.

The Goldstuck on which we did a 2 hour cruise.

Goodbye!