I’m not a fully-experience river cruiser; my trip down the Rhine last summer was only my second. But I came to realize that it shares some aspects with traveling by train that are not shared with road trips.
For a start, you don’t stop wherever you want to, which means you have lots of time to look around at what you’re passing by, and sometimes to wish you could go back and get another look.
And there’s the feeling that you’re passing through backyards and hidden places that you wouldn’t see if you were on the road—but of course, for many, if not most, riverside towns, that’s an illusion. While large cities with big industry often mask the river, for small towns along the Rhine, the river is the main, and occasionally nearly only street because many are tiny towns backed up by steep hills, often planted in grapevines.
Even so, I came to look for and enjoy the glimpses into lives and places I wouldn’t have seen from ‘the other side.’ And, as I reviewed my pictures, I noticed that the styles of buildings and the scale of the view made me think, over and over, of HO gauge model railroad layouts. Especially the ones with the trains in the picture.
Each of the towns has its own character, although most share building styles common throughout the area. But one will have a wooden church, another a stone one or other particular feature.
That includes quite a few towers that are not on churches; some are remaining fortifications; others have industrial pasts as mills.
In some places, the riverbank is walled and equipped with landing points for ships; in others, you could walk right in—and people do. Bathing along the river is common.
These two take advantage of that; the inn and restaurant is named Rheinterrasse, or Rhine Terrace; only yards away, another beach.
Occasionally there’s a larger or fancier house outside a town; sort of a suburb! Not to mention less elegant country living: Quite a few RV parks along the scenic central part of the Rhine.
While tourism is an important factor in the region’s less urban areas, wine is a bigger one along this stretch and there are many vineyards. Also many wine-makers, but we didn’t get to stop for those.
Outside the urban areas and the occasional Autobahn bridge, there are not that many ‘dry-foot’ river crossings in the Rhine Gorge, but there are quite a few ferries shuttling back and forth between the towns.
And, above the towns, there’s quite a bit more rail traffic, and numbers of interesting 19th-century tunnel works.
This stretch of the Rhine is also well-known for its many castles, some well-maintained and others in ruins. The usual order is town on the river, castle above, but sometimes there’s a castle at water level, too, and occasionally modern neighborhoods above the hillside castle.
Small local day trip or full-on river cruise ship…definitely worth the ride!
