So Many Castles, So Little Time

Thought Number One:  Seeing New Places

After leaving Cologne, we made our way back to Weissenthurm to meet up with some friends for dinner. As

Cologne is only an hour north of Andernach, we had plenty of time prior to meeting at the Pfeffermuhle restaurant to finish our exploration of the ancient town.

One of the aspects of taking a trip along the Rhine is that each town will have at least one castle and some type of wall or fortress that remains from the Middle ages.  While the Rhine is far too long for me to post any type of a map to show you the various “castle” stops, I scanned portions of a map to give you the general idea.

In reality, this is a very small portion of the route we would be traveling over the next few days but from Cologne to Andernach, you can see that there are a number of castles in that stretch.

For today’s post I am going to stay within Andernach, though. As I mentioned in my post The First Day, I had spent my first afternoon seeing some of the city and it’s charm, but there was more to see.

As we pulled into town we parked next the the giant fortress wall that remains fairly intact around the town.  Considering the town is over 2000 years old, the old town is full of historical remnants.  While the wall and castle were built in the 12th Century, much of the wall and towers still remain  in fairly good shape.The castle was destroyed by the French in 1689.  That would be when the French also put the “dent” into the Round Tower, that I talked about in The First Day post, as well.  

One of the things that I found interesting, is how the people of Andernach incorporated the wall into building homes.  There are homes that are built to back up into the wall.

Thought Number Two: Remembering the Places We’ve Been