Wow, a week on the Rhine

As these things so often do, they seem to have gone by much faster than they really did, and at the same time, they feel like they must have been much longer than they really were in order to hold all the adventures we had.

Our last day has plenty of the usual - going uphill, iconic river views, castles, etc.

  

I’m pretty sure we were in sight of at least 3 castles, all day every day.

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Pictured are our new German friends, Claudia and Dirk, going, you guessed it, uphill.

We finished the day in Rüdesheim, a hotbed of Riesling production, and the trail here passed through Assmanshäusen, one of the few red wine production areas in Germany.  Needless to say, the area held my attention and there’s been more than one wine tasting along the way - for research, of course.  One of the most remarkable things to me is that these hill/mountain-side vineyards are not terraced; they are laid out with the vine rows running vertically, up and down the slope.  It’s hard to capture on a photo just how steep these vineyards are.  It seems like anyone trying to work in the vineyard would simply roll down the hill into the river.

Perhaps the above shot does the best job of showing how darn vertical these fields are.

Well, the end of one adventure means the start of another one.  We next arrive in Trier, ready to begin a week of hiking along the Mosel/Moselle river.

Stay tuned.