Rhine River Cruises and Rheinfels Castle, Sankt Goar, Germany (July, 2001)

While You Are There: Yeah, you could hike down the Rhine River, but a river cruise is really the way to go. There are so many castles and you get such a great view of them from the river while you are enjoying some German beer, so it seems foolish to exert the energy to hike. One plus for hiking: castle rules permit you to bring your hund but boat rules may not.

Why It’s On My List: It’s fun to imagine that I live in…what era were all these castles built in? Did anyone really live in them? They look cold to me. Magnificent, but cold. And isolated. If I could buy one now and live in it, I might. If I could also afford a private helicopter and some magical mechanism to keep those cavernous rooms warm. Really, there’s not a lot of appeal in this to me. But I did have a lot of fun getting separated from our tour guide and briefly lost in the dungeon beneath the Rheinfels Castle and having no light to find our way out (many people, especially broke college kids on a summer study abroad program in Germany, still didn’t have cell phones in 2002 and, besides, cell phones didn’t have flashlights). Also, being on a boat full of Japanese tourists had its own special appeal. The Japanese apparently loved the cruise so much that they bought one of the castles.

For this year’s A-Z Blog Challenge, I’ve decided to showcase 26 of my favorite places in the world. I’ve only been to 22 of the 196 countries, so I’ve got some more travelling to do, but these places are well worth a visit.