20071213 Rudesheim                      Link to Pictures

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%BCdesheim_am_Rhein

We got up for breakfast but ate litely after our big night last night. Then we set up camp in the Lounge, where a person was giving commentary on our surroundings as we went south (upstream).

Lots of castles & ruins, plus a steep-sided gorge thru which the river runs leads this area to be known as the "Romantic Rhine". We got a whole bunch of pictures - Dolores from the observation deck with the long-lens camera and me from the lounge with the old camera.

Two of the stories of castles I liked were Castle Katz (for the family Katzenelnburg) and the smaller castle they also built which became known as Castle Maus (Mouse) because it was smaller.

We passed the Lorelei Rock and the small green statue of Lorelei and were told the legend.

Sometime in here, the Captain pulled the required lifejacket drill. We survived. Sure hope we don't have to get into this water, though. It's cold and running super-fast.

About 1:00pm (GMT+1) we docked at Rudesheim, a city of 10,000, where we will tour Siegfried's Musickabinett Museum, the Christmas Markt, and then have dinner ashore at Winzerkeller Restaurant.

... time to go ashore ....  more later .....

We were taken to the downtown area by mini-train and given a briefing on what's where. We toured Siegfried's Musikabinett, a museum of old mechanical music machines from music-boxes to huge orchestral-sized machines. We took pictures. Really neat. Bought a book on Rudesheim in the gift shop.

Then we started shopping. We came up with gifts to take home and Dolores bought a carved micro-nativity piece for herself. 

Dinner was a pre-planned event for all guests at "Winzerkeller", in two rooms. Our room was shaped like a cave with terrible acoustics. But the female singer had a great voice with a huge range and did a good job of entertaining. Each of us was given a 0.375 liter bottle of Rheingau white wine; two ladies at our table didn't want any, so we had more than enough for the four of us.

Then out for more shopping. We wandered down the little lane called Drosselgasse (Thrush Lane) which is about seven feet wide. The shops shut down at 8:00pm; as they closed, we walked along the Rhine back to the ship.

During the afternoon, the sun came out for a while, but the wind picked up so it was still chilly. In the evening, the wind died down so it was quite pleasant.