If you have been following along in my travels in Europe last year while on My Viking River Cruise, I last left off with a castle named Katz. My friends and I were cruising down the Rhine through the Upper Middle Rhine Valley Unseco World Heritage Site. We spent a lovely afternoon on the upper deck of our Viking Longship Ingvi taking in the scenery of this beautiful and romantic area of Germany. 
Today I want to tell you about our next encounter on our trip – the famous Loreley Rock and the legend of the maiden Loreley.
The massive Loreley Rock sits at a narrow bend on the Rhine where many shipwrecks have occurred over the centuries.
The cliff area was thought to murmur and has been called the murmuring rocks. This murmuring is what was believed to distract sailors and led to the disasters in this general area.
Over the centuries, legends and myths surrounded the rock and two versions are known, both involving a lovely maiden named Lorelei or Loreley.
In the first, Loreley finds out that her merchant true love has been unfaithful. She is filled with remorse and contemplates suicide.
A bishop becomes enchanted with her beauty and takes her to a convent.
On the way to the convent, Loreley steps off the cliff and falls to her death in the Rhine below.
Sailors believed the murmuring was the spirit of Loreley. Actually it was a nearby waterfall echoing off the cliff walls.
In another version of the legend, it was believed that Loreley would sit on the rocks below the cliff and sing while combing her golden hair.
Thus, she distracted the sailors, leading to their demise in this most dangerous section of the Rhine.
On the opposite side of the River, Saint Goar settled so that he could nurse the sailors back to health after crashing.
Today it is still a dangerous area and all ships that navigate around the bend must use great caution. It is the narrowest part of the Rhine and also the deepest at 20 meters.
Our Captain told us that just a few weeks earlier there had been a wreck here and that a Viking group was held up for hours in a backlog of traffic. Only one ship can travel through the bend at a time, and they have a set of traffic lights similar to trains, called Wahrschau that they use to allow ships to pass through.
As we came around the bend we could see the massive amounts of slate that were hidden on the other side by trees and forest.
This is still part of the Rhenish Massif or Rhenish Slate Mountains. On top of Loreley Rock there is an observation point and visitors center.
They say the view is amazing from there. We saw many visitors when we sailed by. You can even see some of them in the earlier photos of the forested side of the cliff.
And as had happened all afternoon, the clouds came and went. When we came around the cliff they turned gray and moody and made for some very pretty photographs.
And of course, we had another of the km markers to let us know where we were on the Rhine. This one was km 554.
We enjoyed the view and the folklore surrounding Loreley Rock on our afternoon traveling down the Rhine.
This is not a sponsored post. This is my experience from my trip with Viking River Cruises. Email me to find out how you can save $100 when you book your first cruise with Viking through their referral program.
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