2 towns, 2 castles, too many steps

Our first train journey of over an hour took us to Bacharach, a little town that looked like a typical little town in Europe. There was a castle (our climbing target was achieved after 3 minutes but at least there were nice comfy seats to rest in).

I like castles. It's just a pity that most of them are on tops of big hills. It's a pity that our ancestors did not have any vision of the future and just thought about their own personal security.

After weeks of speculation and calling every river The Rhine, we finally saw it. 

The steep hills are filled with grape vines, which begs the question, how do they harvest the grapes without falling off the hill?

I do recall the purchase of a pastry-based item. I have self discipline so I guess it wasn't me.

As you may recall from an earlier post, songs pop into my head based on things I see or hear, either consciously or not. Of course when you catch a train to Bacharach, the first thing that pops into your head is that famous songwriter Burt Bacharach and his well known song 'Breaking up is hard to do'. The thought process then takes you to his wife Carole King and her song 'Tapestry'. I was singing them all day and quickly added them to "songs in my head", one of my Spotify play lists. But as the day went on, something was eating at me. I checked Google. The song was written by Neil Sedaka and Burt was married to Carol Bayer Sager. I should have been singing 'Raindrops Are Falling on My Head' and 'Moving Out Today'. I blame lack of food.

We caught another train to St Goar, walked up a harder track to a castle, used their facilities and walked down. 

Ye olde style flush: the men's flush was like a beer tap handle, the women's was like an old style water pump (sorry, no photo).

Prior, we had found the town's public toilets, so chalk up another win.

Our walk to the castle was fuelled by half a bottle of Fanta each. Due to our hotel room being a hotel room, there were no home made lunches today, just some left over chips. Annette went crazy and got a bread roll to add her chips to whilst I got a bottle of Coke (all because our train back was late).

Our train terminated at Mainz (pronounced Mainz) on the way back. We walked around the block and then headed for Frankfurt. Knowing that a body needs more than just liquid sugar and chips to get by, we checked out some restaurants. We would come back later, after a nap.

Later came. We had Vietnamese. It was excellent. Finally something nice in Frankfurt.