[Idyllchat] (no subject)

Wed Mar 14 16:34:44 EST 2007

Ah - the famous "Christmas" apartments in St. Goar. 

We had the pleasure of staying there a few summers ago and enjoyed it very
much. We had the mid-level apartment and found it very nice and brief views
of the others gave a good impression. It may still be the case that the
owner keeps a stock of bottled water and soft drinks in the basement that
you can use - he tallies up at the end of your stay. There was Internet
service available at 

St. Goar is a tourist town and thus has a lot of "junk" for sale, but do
check out the clock shop at the end of the main street (off the highway). 

You are directly across the street from the Rhine and can spend any number
of hours just watching the people and the boats. 

There are any number of nice eating places right in town and all have their
menus posted in English for you to make your choice. 

Don't miss the wine tour sponsored by Idyll - it is in the Mosel river town
of Winningen - If it is still being done - the lunch and the wine are out of
this world! 

We made good use of both boats and trains and found them both reliable and
good transportation. As I recall your train station is about a 10 minute
walk and is an "unmanned" station. The trains run on time. 

Some special places: 

Castle Burg Rheinfels located above the village and up a very steep hill.
You can take a trolley. 

Rüdesheim – a very touristy town – but it has a great Christmas shop. We
took a chair lift which took us over acres and acres of vineyards to the
Niederwald Dentanal – a monument to the establishment of the German Reich.
There is a great view at the top looking down to Rüdesheim and across the
Rhine to Bingen. We followed a marked trail on a 30 minute flat walk that
passed through the Niederburg National Park (hard wood trees) that led to
another chair lift that took us down the hillside to Assmanshausen – the red
wine capital of the middle Rhine. It took awhile to find the train station –
not very clearly marked – and then we trained back to St. Goarshausen. 

The cathedral in Cologne (just 90 minutes away) 

Remagen - the site of the famous WWII bridge and now a Freedom Museum. 

Trier – about 2 hours away has many interesting places to visit including
some rather complete Roman baths 

Mainz. With the help of the information office we bought a day pass (for
two) for the city transit system and marked our map for the places on our
itinerary. First we went to the Gutenberg Museum. They have three of his
original Bibles from 1542 – two old testament and one new – in a room that
looks like and in fact is a vault – big heavy doors. All is under glass with
special lighting – very impressive. They even had working replicas of his
early printing presses, displays of later presses; plus hundreds of
documents that were done with different printing methods. So it was also a
history of printing and paper (and other printable materials) and ink museum
too! After lunch we took a bus to the Roman Ship Museum. This was
fascinating – they found parts of Roman ships when digging foundations for
new buildings – enough to get a good idea of how they were built and what
they looked like – so they made full-scale replicas of the ships alongside
the old remains and then provided drawings or the details. You could also
watch craftsmen at work on the models. We then walked to St. Stephens church
and along the way, while looking at the map, a gentleman came up to us and
offered help in finding the right street – this happened many times on our
trip – people were very friendly and helpful. In St. Stephens are 9 stained
glass windows done by Mark Chagal – they are blue and they are glorious
works of art! 

Oberwesel (just a few minutes south on the train) the Catholic church.
People were cleaning up and doing maintenance chores inside the church and
they opened up the inner chapel for us and turned on the lights. What a
sight! There is a gold triptych alter dating from 1322 with 56 carved
figures on it. We were just amazed at the beauty of this church in this tiny
Rhine village. There are also many other religious relics in this
magnificent church 