The calm of
our mooring across the river from Koblenz was well and truly shattered
yesterday evening with the launch of the town’s music festival. This mainly
consists of rival rock bands vying with each other to be the loudest. Tonight
they are at it again, with the promised climax a cavalcade of 200 or so boats
coming down the river, and a massive firework display from the fortress. The
decibel level is such, however, that we are not tempted to cross the water, and
will observe from the aft deck, glass in hand.
Today was
wheels day: after a somewhat rocky start. The Europcar website offered a pickup
at the central station, which was much easier for us than the out of town
locations of the other companies. But it was all a lie: no office, no
representative, and only after much angst did we discover that the railway
ticket sales people could help. So they
sent a driver to take us to their out of town location – a couple of hours of
the day lost. However they made up for it with a big discount, and did not
laugh too much when we panicked that our TomTom gps did not have German maps,
pointing out that the BMW had built in SatNav.
We set off
to get a foretaste of the Moselle, and reached the pretty town of Winningen, in
time to sample the excellent Riesling, and have a good lunch in this pretty
square:
We explored
the town, and enjoyed the vines growing up walls and across the streets:
More vines
as we progressed, this time to positively our last castle:
Burg Eltz
was built way back when and has been in the same family for 33 generations! Not bad
going.
Lots of
people, mostly Germans, but they offered an English-language tour, which was well
attended and interesting, despite the rather Dalek-like delivery of the guide.
There was also a shuttle bus from the car park, which was welcome.
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