Tuesday, March 24, 2009

10th Anniversary Continued--Oberwesel

David and I arrived at the castle early to make sure that everything was all set for the evening. It was some hours before check in, so we planned to explore the castle grounds a bit, then drive down to the village of Oberwesel. In the gardens we discovered an arch framing a path. We followed the path and soon realized it led all the way down to the village. It is a very pretty walk. Once in the village we realized that this time of year, on Saturday afternoon, Oberwesel is very nearly a ghost town. We didn't mind a bit. We wandered about exploring the narrow streets,  looking at all the cool old buildings.

A passing woman noticed us taking pictures and showed us how to get to the town wall. She didn't speak English and we don't speak German, but with a lot of sign language we seemed to understand each other. We spent some time walking along the top of the wall enjoying the view. We even climbed up one of the watch towers. Dave enjoyed the elevated view of the town and the vineyards across the Rhine, I just enjoyed getting down onto firm ground. Too high for me!

Although all the shops, and even the visitors center were closed, we did notice several restaurants open for business. For lunch we split a döner kebab. YUMMM! We noticed several docks along the Rhine where river cruise boats pull in during the summer.  I would assume there is more going on during tourist season.

If you do decide to stay at the hotel and walk down to explore the village make sure you pay attention the last photo in the slide show below. If you walk down, you will have to walk back up! It is a looooong way back up. I was quite sore the next day!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I took a class once on learning language. The teacher told us that only a small percentage of communication is the spoken word; most communication is the level of body language, sensory perception, etc. I have found this to be VERY true! It's funny how much we can communicate w/o sharing a common language!
I really enjoyed those pics too. Now I want to go to Germany.

Jenn said...

I was looking at the last picture and I had to re-read the sentence about it, trying to figure out just where it was that you walked from b/c I thought, there's NO way it's that castle all the way up there. Until I realized it was. Ohmygoodness that's a LOOOONG walk! Beautiful pictures (as always!).

Terio said...

Hi Guys! Very nice slide show. I bet it is beautiful in that village durring summer!