Saturday 7 December 2019. The third part of today's excursion, after the Rhine cruise and Boppard, is Koblenz.
It's mid afternoon as we arrive in Koblenz, the city at the point where the River Moselle flows into the Rhine. Several river cruise ships are moored up here and we sneak a peek inside as we walk past. The standard of furnishings in the cabins looks very high and luxurious.
We are walking up a main shopping street, Miss Franny looking in wine shop windows picking things for me to juggle later on our walk back to the coach... Bits of music in several different styles reaches us and eventually we come across these four guys who happily pose and/or blink as I take a photo. You win some, you lose some...
A massive shop selling Christmas decorations. I went all nostalgic when I saw these as my parents had a couple of glass birds just like these when I was still playing with my toys on the floor with bare knees rather than from behind a microphone. The pink one next to the gold one came home with us.
Ta Da! Our first Christmas Market! We've glimpsed others down side streets but decided to walk up the shopping street and then work our way back down doing the side streets.
Glűwein is mulled wine and lots of people were wandering round with glass mugs getting emptier and eyes getting glassier!
Well I don't mind if I do... The mugs came home with us too.
Not really sure what this was about... The policeman seems amused but what is that she's holding? A turkey foot? A set of withered bagpipes? And she's reaching for a bribe out of her purse too...
Time for a wander and getting into the Christmas Spirit. Or should that be "getting Christmas Spirits into us"...?
Ham and cheese on a stall. Fran considered getting a small cheese as it would have been cold enough in the hold of the coach. Kaiserschinken as the ham is labelled, is literally King Ham. Miss Franny shook her head. "I might want some cheese but I don't want any king ham..." Blimey... Alright, alright, calm down..."
We had a good wander around all the side street markets on the way back down. A group of people with brass instruments were playing just short snatches of Christmas Carols, getting a round of applause after each one. Literally just one verse for each one. Perhaps they were enjoying the applause!
As it starts to get dark it gets quite a bit colder. We set off back to the river with about 45 minutes before we are due at the coach, to walk along to a significant landmark. We reach the junction of the Moselle and Rhine rivers and looking across the Rhine, we see the cable car.
This is the landmark. A huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm of WW1 fame with the base made into a prison by Hitler. It was specifically to hold Winston Churchill in WW2 and to incarcerate and humiliate him in sight of passers-by.
I have no tripod with me, but can't resist taking a few photos of the Moselle River at night.
I've always loved night photography anyway. Often quite ordinary buildings can look wonderful when picked out by lights against a dark sky.
We walked as far as the first bridge over the Moselle River and then turned back to return to the coach for our trip back to Assmannhausen and our hotel.
Once back we had just enough time before dinner to trot a way down the street to take a photo of the hotel.
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