Castles, Castles Castles... and a boat

Today we spend 6 hours on a boat going upstream (South) on the Rhein River.  It has more castles over such a short stretch of land than anywhere else in Europe.  We saw about 30 castles and probably 50-60 old catholic and protestant churches in addition to a ton of cool old watch towers and even the famous Lorelei statue.

This is the agenda for the trip.  You can see the major castles. We started at the very top at Koblenz and went all the way to the bottom at Rudesheim where we spent the night.

Our Boat

This section of the river is very dangerous.  The sailors have historically blamed the Siren Lorelei for their trouble navigating the many rocks in the river.  It is still a very dangerous section of the river.

Notice the castle tower's on the rail tunnels.  There are a lot of tunnels in this section, it was a nice touch of the people in this area to add the castle accents to the tunnels.  

This castle is currently a youth hostel.  You can stay there if you want!

This is where our camera died, but luckily this was the last of the really cool castles.  Since out boat was running behind, we missed the last train back to the town we were staying in so we spent the night in a cute little hotel in a small village just South of this castle.  The hotel was named after this castle RheinStein.