Castle on the Rhine

One of the best things that we did was to spend the night in a castle on the Rhine. Although it was planned to be our "big splurge" of the whole trip, it turned out to be the best bang for the buck that we had. It wasn't however without a little bit of a challenge. This particular castle was, like most of them are, located up on a very high hill. The drive up wasn't any big deal, but the parking lot was located a little way down the hill from the castle. We got the luggage dragged up alright, but I was winded by the time we reached the entrance steps. At that point a very nice gentleman offered to get my suitcase up the steps for me. We started chatting and it turned out that he lives in Aubrey, up near Denton! Any way, we got inside and I thought my troubles were over. Ha! Turns out that they had given us a room upgrade and it just happened to be at the very top of a very high tower. Of course there was no elevator, but luckily for both of us, there was a staff member who picked up both our suitcases and trotted up the stairs. It was 6 flights up and I thought that I would die. It took me a little while to get to the room (had to stop and rest a couple of times on the way), but when I finally got there it took my breath away. The bed had a crown canopy, the room was filled with antiques (including chairs, tables, cabinets, desk and a sofa), the fixtures in the bathroom were all gold, and there was fruit and a bottle of sherry on the coffee table. Best of all, there was a balcony that looked out on the Rhine and the city far below us. We had a fabulous gourmet dinner and extensive buffet breakfast and when we got the bill it was lower than the rate quoted to us when we booked it online. The only problem was to get to the dining room for the dinner and the breakfast we had to go up and down all those steps. But it was really worth it and you must know that it was nice if I was willing to huff and puff my way up those stairs all those times.