Rhine on Fire

This weekend we stuck closer to home. We read and heard about The Rhine on Fire celebration in Rudesheimer, Germany, on the Rhine river, near the large city of Mainz. The event is a flotilla of lighted ships and boats crusing about 10 miles up the river, greeted by fireworks as they approach each castle and town along the river, and there are plenty of castles. We went to town early and had to ferry across (not any bridges in this area).



We parked, illegally ($40 ticket later) and caught this cool gondola above the vineyards. For those who like Riesling, the sweet or dry German white wine, this is the place it comes from. Here's Jeff looking like he's got his Bubba Gump ball cap on:



Jena makes it look a little better. See the vineyards?



At the top, we enjoyed the view.



Then walked around to this monument to German unification after the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870's.



We then enjoyed the wine. Jena Found a white wine that she could bear to drink. We tried a red, but it was not too good.



Apparently St. Nicholas keeps his reindeer in Germany for the summer, so we fed them for him.



We took a 1 mile nature walk over to a chairlift down to the town of Assmannhausen (I'll leave the literal translation to your imagination). There, we had a great dinner and then found our "round trip" ticket was for a boat back to town at 6pm, but it was 7 pm...so we did what anybody would do: we stowed away on a train and hopped off back in Rudesheimer. And we did not go to jail!



We left early to go across the river, to avoid the after-fireworks rush for the ferry. That was a mixed bag. The ferry had already closed and we drove for over an hour to get to the other side and back to the area. We made it back just in time and got a front row seat for the singular most amazing fireworks show either of us has ever seen. This photo doesn't show it well, but you can see the ships lit up at the bottom and the fireworks coming out of the vineyards. It was a good day.