Day 43-45 This is the last fun day

June 28 -- It was time to leave France and head back to Germany for our final stop of the trip and one of the ones that we were looking forward to the most because of the medieval castles that we were going to see. Although there were some things that would have been interesting to see along the way (namely the Black Forest), we knew that the 3 hour drive would take us longer than that no matter what, so we opted to just head straight to our destination of Bacharach. We were sad to leave France because of how friendly the people were that we met.

It did indeed take us most of the day to get to our castle home (Stahleck Castle) for the night. The youth hostel where we stayed in Bacharach is an old castle built in the 12th century complete with towers, thick walls, and plumbing that has thankfully been updated, since chamber pots really aren't my thing, especially when I'm sharing a room (the smallest room of our trip) with 4 other people. Views of the Rhine River in both directions were all important to the builders of the castle, who worried about seiges and enemies sneaking up on them, so of course, we had amazing views to enjoy in 2017, too. An interesting fact about the castle/youth hostel was that it was used as a prison during WW2 to hold youth who refused to join Hitler's Youth.

After checking in, we walked down to the town of Bacharach, which is a dying town other than the tourism, of which there doesn't even seem to be much of that compared to some places we've been. We ate dinner at a place with really good food and the first really good beer in Germany according to SC. The restaurant was under an old carousel pavilion, which was a little strange, but the waitress/cook (one person was running the whole show) was so nice that it made up for the strange setting. The main problem with castles is that you have to walk up a lot of steep hills to get to them, so we worked off our dinner by hiking back up to our room. The main problem with castles that have been turned into hostels is that it's a really cool destination to bring school groups to visit, so the place was crawling with young kids that were running and screaming in the courtyard late into the night.

July 29-- We rented bikes in the morning and rode them downriver to St. Goar. We saw many castles along the way, including one in the middle of the river and several that have been turned into hotels. We also saw the cliffs of Loreley above the deepest and narrowest section of the Rhine, where many boats sank in ages past because of underwater boulders.

We got to St. Goar around noon and ate at a delicious bakery restaurant. Then, we took our time walking through town shopping. We walked our bikes up to the Rheinfels Castle, which is mostly in ruins. We hadn't realized how short we were cutting out time if we were going to catch a boat back to Bacharach until we got up to the castle, so we basically raced through the castle and then flew downhill on our bikes and through town and basically rolled onto the boat right before it pulled away from port. The ride back to Bacharach took about an hour and was very peaceful, and the boat managed to out race the rain. We rode around town a little more after getting off the boat and then ate dinner at the oldest building in town. And finally, we tromped back up the hill for the night.

June 30 -- We wanted to visit one more castle before calling it quits, and we were glad we did even if it was a little out of our way. Rick Steve's claims that the Eltz Castle is the best castle in Europe. I would have to see more cattle in other parts of Europe before I would make that claim, but it was a really cool castle.The Eltz family has owned it for 33 generations, and although they don't still live there, they still visit once a week and arrange beautiful flower displays in the rooms that the tourists see. The paintings, tapestries, and furnishings range from the 12th century to the 19th century. After the tour and a quick picnic lunch, we completed our circle of Germany by driving back to Ramstein. We even got a room (remember the 4 bedroom apartment from 6 weeks ago?) on base again. We did some shopping at the commissary and BX, and then proceeded to repack our suitcases in hopes of getting on a flight tomorrow.