Last week I told you about visiting the tiny town of Kaub while we cruised down the Rhine on my Viking River Cruise in 2014. And I told you that it had not one, but two castles that we viewed as we sailed along on that beautiful Spring day.
Castle Gutenfels was the first of the two castles that we saw while cruising through Kaub. It sits high on a stone outcrop above the village. On the lower wall you can faintly see the word Hotel.
That’s because today the castle is one of several romantic hotels along the Rhine. It was converted to a hotel in the twentieth century. The castle itself was originally built around 1200.
But what we see today is not the original. The castle was often besieged and under conflict and the ruin was saved in 1833 by an archivist and reconstruction later was started in 1888 by a German architect from Cologne.
The castle is one of two in Kaub. The other is Castle Pfalzgrafenstein and I will share about it tomorrow.
Below you can see why this is such a romantic castle. Just look at the view from our ship! The quaint little village below, terraced vineyards on the hillside…
The village of Kaub dates to 983 and is where Prussian Field Marshall Blucher crossed the Rhine on his way to defeat Napoleon in Belgium and Kaub was part of the Free State Bottleneck after World War I. That’s a lot of history for such a tiny little town.
It really is a pretty castle. Even if it is not the original castle. It sure looks like it could have been there for hundreds and hundreds of years.
That’s one thing that amazes me about these castles….it’s how long they have been in existence. It is hard to imagine something built so long ago that is still standing today.
Below is the backside of the castle, at least from how we viewed it that day. And there is another hotel sign on one of the walls. From this view you can get a better feel for how large it really is.
And what a great view below from our ship. You also have a better view of the rocky outcrop the castle was built on. Those rocky outcrops seem to be a popular spot to build castles. You find castles all over the world built on them. Just too dang hard to attack I guess!
Our weather that afternoon while we cruised along on our ship was incredible. It was warm (we got sunburned sitting on the upper deck all those hours) and the clouds were amazing. We had some gray clouds throughout the day and even a little hail at one time, but we could not have asked for a more picture perfect day.
Here you can see what I mean about the clouds. They seemed to be following behind us most of the time.
And they really would give the landscape an ominous look at times.
But while we weren’t paying attention, our next castle crept up on us. Check back tomorrow to see that other famous castle.
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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