I have been telling you recently about my Viking River Cruise that I took in 2014 with friends along the Rhine in Europe. We had just finished an afternoon sailing through the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we viewed castles and romantic villages before docking in Rudesheim, which I will share with you today.
Rudesheim
Rudesheim is definitely a tourist town. It is said that after the Cathedral in Cologne, it is the second most visited attraction along the Rhine.
And they are also a famous wine making town.
They have a wine queen and princesses and a huge festival every summer.
And it has what every tourist town should, lots of hotels, lots of shopping and lots of places to eat. We started off heading for the Market Square along a street full of hotels and shops.
Some hotels were more modern, but many were housed in older buildings.
All of the streets here were cobblestone, with narrow alleys leading off of them. Most were too narrow for cars, attesting to the age of the buildings here.
It was a very colorful and vibrant town.
I liked how we would find touches of the modern world mingled in with the old, historic sections. This was probably the only public pay phone I remember seeing on our trip. And the large @ symbol on the window of the storefront was definitely twenty first century. And then there were all of those old TV antennas on the roof. Definitely old meeting new here.
Now we had seen lots of little villages along the Rhine already with Half Timber architecture, but here was our first experience seeing them up close and personal.
Most Half Timber structures here in Germany consist of some type of masonry on the first floor and then are half timbered on the upper floors. It simply means that their frames are exposed and filled in with plaster or some other type of insulating material. And for some reason, that has made them super charming. In fact, in Germany there are even tours just around this type of architecture!
And just like in Cologne, there was Wisteria in bloom everywhere. I loved how they had it trained to climb the lamp posts here.
Not all of it was in bloom, like the vine on the post above.
But there was plenty that was in bloom.
And the aroma was heavenly. And oh, we had made it to a square or plaza that was open. It was nice, because some of those little streets were claustrophobic!
I loved this gate made with wagon wheels that we passed.
And there was a pretty church, St. Jakobus, which sits on the edge of the Market Square. It dates to the eleventh century and is an example of Romanesque architecture. It was heavily damaged during World War II and has since been rebuilt.
And here was the Jakobus Klause Biergarten. Funny how they always have a pub close to the church. And this one was kind of hidden down another narrow alley.
But now we were getting closer to the top of the street and closer to the world famous Drosselgasse Wine Alley, a super narrow pedestrian only corridor of Rudesheim. We were starting to see more cafes and there was music and a festival type atmosphere everywhere we went.
I am not sure if you have noticed or not, but we have been slowly and steadily climbing a little hill. Rudesheim has a gentle incline from the Rhine below and outside the town limits are vineyards upon vineyards. Remember I said that Rudesheim was known as a wine growing town?
Here was another picturesque little alley off the Market Street.
And next we came upon the Burgerhaus, a little hotel, restaurant and gift shop that was built in 1684. It is referred to as Hessian timbered, which may refer to this area, since we were close to Hesse. I just love how crazy crooked it is. And look at the grapevines painted on the timbered part, along with a black cat. It even had grapevines carved into the wood around the gift shop window.
It sits on a little corner, kind of like the Flat Iron building in New York City, only on a much smaller scale.
And they even had graffiti.
And more little alleys. Here the cobblestones had moss growing between them.
With more little hotels and cafes hidden off the main streets.
All of them looked super charming. Lots of decoration and adornment on the buildings and flower boxes filled with colorful greenery and flowers. Very picturesque.
And something else we noticed, grapevines trained to grow along the buildings. They were just starting to bud out. I bet in late summer they were a sight to see.
Drosselgasse
And then we hit the top of the street and turned onto the famous Drosselgasse.
It was narrow and full of people, shops and restaurants.
And everything and anything having to do with wine.
There were interesting buildings but it was hard to get good pictures because the street was so narrow and there were so many people. And we stopped for gelato, which was wonderfully delicious. We didn’t want to spoil our dinner later. We would be coming back here for a fun evening of food and traditional German experiences.
As we headed back to the ship, I had to snap this picture of His and Hers Vespa Scooters. They would be fun to take on a tour of the town, but they never would have made it on the Drosselgasse. They even had their own parking lane. How cute.
And there were some cute baby geese on the bank of the Rhine by our ship.
And swans. We saw them everywhere along the Rhine.
But we needed to freshen up for dinner. Remember how I told you before that sometimes two ships would be docked side by side? Here our ship was docked along side the Gullveig which meant we had to pass through it to get to our ship. You always needed to make sure that you remembered what your ship looked like on the inside, but in case you got on the wrong one, the crew was ready to assist you in finding your vessel. They were decorated differently inside, so that helped, too.
There was an off ship excursion for dinner that night, in which we would head back into Rudesheim for dinner and German entertainment. But the ship was docked until mignight, so you were also free to eat on board or venture to a local restaurant or biergarten on your own. We were looking forward the the excursion, as were most other passengers. I will share that experience in a future post.
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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