Romance on the Rhine

This past weekend, my lovely boyfriend Alfonso came to visit me in Germany. Instead of staying around Frankfurt since I’ve been here for over a month, we decided to have ourselves a quick little getaway to the Rhine Valley–I highly recommend this seriously underrated tourist destination. And, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage region!

We rented a car from Europcar for the weekend, which was quick, cheap, and easy. They provided us with a brand new Volkswagen T-Cross, and we had a blast driving it.

Our first stop on our trip was to Rüdesheim am Rhein, a cute little village just under an hour’s drive from Frankfurt’s city center. During the last ten minutes or so of the drive, the road starts to wind alongside the Rhine, and the first glimpse of the river is striking. Then, you arrive to the little “dorm” (that’s village in German).

When we got out of the car, our first stop was to have a beer and put on some sunscreen because it was really hot. Then, we wandered through the charming streets that seemed to have jumped straight out of a fairytale.

…I mean look at it. Then, we made our way over to the cable cars which take you over an expansive vineyard with views of the center, the Rhine and surrounding area. It was breathtaking.

At the top, we were let off in a woodsy area at the top of a hill. There were a couple of bars and ice cream stands, but we chose to make our way over to a famous monument a little further up the road. The towering monument was built in 1883 and stands at 38 meters tall (again, that’s 125 feet for my fellow Americans because for some reason we don’t use the metric system and I have to type the same information two times because we are extra). Anyway, the monument represents German unification after the Franco-Prussian War. It’s called Niederwalddenkmal, but it’s easier to refer to it as “the monument.” Here it is:

Next, we went down the stairs leading up to the monument to take in the beauty of the Rhine.

I must mention that while we only spent a few hours here, there is a lot to do. The most popular tourist attraction is to take the cable car up like we did, and then walk for about an hour past the monument until you reach the town called Assmannshausen (or you can take a chairlift if you prefer, however the hiking trails are supposed to be wonderful). When you finish in Assmannshausen, you take another chairlift down to the river, where you board a ferry that takes you right back to Rüdesheim, or across to the other side of the river to a town called Bingen. Unfortunately, Alfonso and I arrived just too late to make the last chairlift from Assmannshausen, so we couldn’t do the route. Oh well, next time!

So, after we had had our fill of the views, we decided not to take the cable car back down the hill to Rüdesheim village and walk instead. It was hot and we were sweaty, but it was so peaceful to be able to walk by ourselves through the rows and rows of grapevines. It was really cool to and cute to see so many different types of grapes growing on the vines (in case you didn’t know, I’m a plant freak). But look, grapes!

They say Germany is known for its beer, but the wine is also equally incredible. Definitely had my fare share on this trip, but not too much because we were driving!

After a lovely first day, we finished it off by driving almost an hour to our next destination, Oberwesel, where we were going to spend our first night. More on that later. Stay tuned!!!