Round The World and other travel

August 2014: Germany's Rhineland

from the Mosel to the Neckar

Part 2: St Goar to Mainz

St Goar

The small town of Sankt Goar is centrally positioned in the Rhine Gorge, on the great river's left bank. Rheinfels Castle stands on a prominent hilltop location overlooking the town.

St Goarshausen

Sankt Goarshausen is the sister town of St Goar, located directly opposite on the right bank of the Rhine and connected to its twin by ferry. The celebrated Loreley Rock stands nearby, guarding the narrowest part of the Rhine outside Switzerland.

Bacharach

Bacharach is a small left-bank town lying 16km northwest of Bingen, which I visited in 2013. Dating from at least as far back as the 11th century, the town has a number of nicely preserved buildings; while these are not necessarily as old as the town itself, they do give present-day Bacharach an attractive and photogenic appearance. All this is overlooked by Stahleck Castle, which now serves as a youth hostel.

Mainz

Mainz - with a population of 200,000, the largest city visited on this trip - is the capital of the German federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz. It lies at the confluence of the Rhine and Main, directly opposite Wiesbaden (the capital of Hesse, which I visited in 2013). As befits an ancient city of this size, there is plenty to see and do: the thousand-year-old cathedral, for example, should certainly be high on the visitor's list. Mainz was also home to Gutenberg, the inventor of mechanical movable-type printing, which was selected by Time-Life magazine as the single most important invention of the second millennium.