nice view from our room

We then went for a morning walk around Bacharach:

found this baby mouse on the path, I could have picked it up :)

Next, we drove to Burg Rheinfels, old castle ruins interesting to visit still:

bring your flashlight for the inside tunnels

france owned that region for a while under napoléon

Nice views from the castle of course:

Next, we drove to Koblenz to see the German Corner (merging of two rivers):

From there, we crossed the Rhine and drove to Marksburg to go visit a very nice medieval castle:

while due to timing we only caught a tour in German, the tour guide was great nonetheless

damn, I'm hungry just tpying this now :)

the armours could weigh up to 50kg

good views, again

We then made the fateful mistake of driving back down to Loreley, just across from St Goar, and instead of taking the car ferry right away, we drove up to a viewing point at Loreley:

This however cost us a lot, we were unable to drive back down to Loreley (cops blocked us as they had locked down the city due to fireworks), so we couldn't take the ferry across, and I had to drive a very round about way to Filsen nigher north. Filsen is not far, but the police forced us to go the long away around lots of mountain twisty roads. Good thing that I drive those things for breakfast, but even so, we had wasted over an entire hour going around to Filsen, getting the car ferry there, and driving back down to St Goar through the 61 highway because I was worried they'd close the river access road to St Goar too.

Eventually we made it in St Goar, parked a bit far away, walked back in beginning rain and only managed to score chinese food in a covered spot, waiting for the fireworks to start at 21:00. When they did, they were quite nice, despite the rain. They get started from a barge in the middle of the river, and then from the top of 2 castles on each side (although those are a bit less impressive) with a big finale launched from the river again. It's hard to get a viewing spot where you can see all 3 locations, but 2 out of 3 was easy. However, it was very hard to get good fireworks pictures when it's raining on your camera though, so these are the next best few:

We then walked back to our car, and back to bed for some much needed sleep, jetlag and all...