Two nights in Bacharach meant we could daytrip to one of a few options we had listed. After some breakfast in bed, we decided on the hour-ish train trip to Rick Steves's favoritest castle, Burg Eltz. This barely edged out seeing Katz and Maus castles.


We'd done all our intercity bookings in advance, this would be our first platform purchase. As you'd expect, the train arrived and left from the opposite platform as we were buying our tickets, but it'd only be an hour til the next one.


The burg was a pleasant hour-ish hike upstream from the Moselkern train station.


The cottages gave way to a forest that had trees and flowers beginning to bloom and lots of bright green moss.


The castle was a neat, vertical affair built into a natural rock spire. As it is full of unrestored and original-but-restored stuff, the only way to see the interior was a guided tour. The tour was brief and interesting, and punctuated with a viewing of some beautifully-crafted muskets, swords, and jewelry in the treasury.



Rheinhotel had offered a picnic pack that was perfect for our return trip through the forest.


We'd scouted the return trips from Moselkern and there'd been hourly trains listed. When we arrived at the station, however, the ticket machine said we might not make the connection to Bacharach. Gmaps also said we would miss the last train from Koblenz to Bacharach. Uh oh.




We took the first leg anyway, it would at least put us just ten hours' walk from our hotel. As we got closer to Koblenz, I pulled up the DeutscheBahn website and found that there were still trains making the trip from Koblenz to Bacharach.

After a quick shower, we were happy to see a few Bacharach restaurants open on the eve of the Good Friday holiday. A full day capped with pizza and beer left us ready to zonk out.

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