On our anniversary we spent an easy travel day by car in the middle Rhine River area. Our hotel overlooks the Rhine River and we had considered a Rhine River cruise but since we have a car, we are driving up and down the Rhine River to the same places the river cruises go.
We started our day with at visit to the Eltz Castle. This is a pretty well preserved 8-story castle that is one of the few castles that was left standing after all the wars in European history. They told us on our tour that the primary reason the castle remained standing after all these wars was because the owner played politics to keep it from getting destroyed. We took a few pictures here but once inside, they prohibit pictures to preserve what is there.
After the Eltz Castle we went to the City of Koblenz. This city is where the Rhine River merges with the Mosel River. This looks like a very nice and fairly modern city with cable cars crossing the river near the point where the rivers merge. There is also an enormous statute of Kaiser Wilhelm at the point where the rivers merge. He is the dude that united Germany and I guess when you're that important you get a big statute. :-) During WWII the statute was damaged and partially destroyed by an artillery strike but it was repaired and rebuilt. In 1953, Germany created a new anthem and united at this location to sing their anthem together for the first time.
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