Sleep-in this morning but still we had to be on the sun deck for the Lorelei stretch where each side has charming villages, some conveniently named;
others with a castle overlooking them:
We stayed on the sun deck (top deck) all morning, passing the statue of the Lorelei who used to lure sailors to their deaths with her hair-combing and plaintive songs. Modern travellers are safe in their Spaceships with butlers handing out glasses of the local wine, a delicious Riesling purchased (in bulk) at the last stop.
It was happy up on the sun deck with the sun shining, the butler appearing regularly to top up the wine and pretty village after pretty village in view. All this before lunch!
An Ancient Mariner appeared (there are several among passengers) to explain about the quaint little faux castles dotting the railway line running along the bank. They were built by the Germans in WW2 to disguise tunnel entrances so that the Allied bombers would think it was just a castle and not bomb it, thereby disrupting rail traffic.
After lunch we moored at Rudessheim and a choo choo train appeared to convey us up through the village to Siegfried's Musikkabinett, a museum of automated music devices which Mary Leech had advised not to miss.
Our guide in the floppy hat.
Quite right, Mary! It was wonderful and I could have spent all day listening to the various devices play. The shop was a great temptation but I managed to resist.
The village was crammed with buses and visitors and with a start I realised it was Saturday - time is blurring. Scenic passengers had free rides on the chair lift so we decided to give it a go. Marvellous! Wunderbar! Best event yet. We soared quietly over a vineyard landscape with workers below hoeing and pruning and doing viticulture things while we looked out over the Rhine - our ship a dot in the foreground - to more hills, bigger towns, the river snaking away into the distance.
At the top is Niederwalddenkmal, a hulking great monument to Germany's victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, one of the most visited monuments in Germany.
It's a fabulous setting.
Down again, just as nice this time:
The village even more crowded. I liked this sign:
So we found a vine-shaded courtyard attached to a hotel where a string trio was playing pleasant music
and ordered the local Riesling for me and a local beer for David with a picture of the Niederwalddenkmal on the label:
Back on the ship, we had a concert from a zither player, most enjoyable.
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