Day 5: The Rhine - St. Goar & Burg Rheinfels

St. Goar is another little town along the Rhine, next door to Bacharach where we were staying. It's home to Burg Rheinfels, at one time the largest castle on the Rhine. The ruins are now only a third of its former size. We did a walking tour on our own (all the tours are in German) and went on a pretty crazy excursion.

We took the detour Rick Steves talks about - only possible with a flashlight. It's down into this tunnel system they built around the outer walls of the castle then booby-trapped the ceilings with explosives to crush intruders. It's about 3ft. high most the way so you are crawling around in the absolute pitch black. Like seriously no one with the slightest hint of claustrophobia or fear of the dark should do this. We only had my tiny LED barely-working-if-you-twist-and-hold-it-right flashlight (which Chris had in the front) and we're trying to read the directions of this underground, cold, dark, rocky maze. Which narrow tunnels to turn down and which not to, which T to turn right at then take second left afterwards, kinda crazy. The whole time I was trying to memorize the way back out in case our flashlight died, so we wouldn't die there. I'm thinking no way this would be allowed as a self-touring area back in the states. When we finally made our way out there was a couple with a little girl and 2 dogs about to try to enter. The dogs were having none of it and we tried to discourage them... I hope they're not still there.