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Emerald Star Cruise Photos

From: Emerald Waterways cruise review: Nuremberg-Trier

Day 5: Rhine & Koblenz

During the night, Emerald Star had passed Frankfurt. When we opened our curtains on Saturday morning, we were cruising past Eltville at Rhine Km 511, which was just north of Mainz and Wiesbaden.

On the Rhine, kilometers are measured from the city of Konstanz, Germany, on the Bodensee (a.k.a. Lake Constance). The Rhine joins the North Sea at the Hoek van Holland, Km 1036.2 Km.

The Middle Rhine, where most of the river's famous castles are located, is roughly between Bingen (Km 526) and Koblenz (Km 593).

In addition to "Rhine Kilometer" markers at 1-Km intervals, the river has tenth-Km markers and "plus" markers that represent half-Km.

As Emerald Star cruised north, we approached Burg Ehrenfels, or Ehrenfels Castle, near Rüdesheim on the river's right bank.

The fortress (now a ruin) was built in 1212, later served as a Rhine toll station, and was damaged in the Thirty Years War and again in 1689 during the Siege of Mainz.

Nearby, the pretty wine village of Rüdesheim had two sightseeing boats moored along the waterfront.

As Emerald Star cruised north, we spent most of our time on the Sun Deck, where the weather was cool and drizzly but the scenery was spectacular.

Vineyards and Deutsche Bahn railroad tracks lined both banks of the Rhine.

We enjoyed views of towns and villages, and the residents enjoyed even better views of the Mittelrhein.

Another minute, another medieval castle: In this case, Burg Reichenstein (now a museum and boutique hotel) and St. Clement's Chapel.

The castle, also known as the Falkenburg, is a popular venue for weddings and honeymoons.

Stahleck Castle, at Bacharach (Rhine Km 543), displayed the colorful umbrellas of its DJH Youth Hostel.

A vineyard near Bacharach had a billboard built into the hillside.

From roughly 800 to 1800 AD, there were 79 toll booths along the Rhine, collecting tolls for a long line of emperors and "robber barons." You can read more about them here (PDF document).

This small castle, Pfalzgratenstein,, is a former toll station at Kaub, on the west bank of the Rhine between Stahleck Castle and Burg Schönburg.

The Burg Schönberg, now a four-star castle hotel, was a few miles north at Oberwesel, near the entrance to the Rhine Gorge (possibly the most scenic stretch of the Rhine).

The Lorelei Rock, named after the siren of the German folktale and Henrich Heine poem, loomed over the Rhine just before St. Goar and St. Goarshausen.

We passed more castles and the occasional church, then encountered a car ferry near Boppard.

The Rhine is like an acquatic freeway, with ships, barges, and sightseeing boats cruising in both directions.

According to the Central Commission for the Navivation of the Rhine (CCNR), nearly 7,000 commercial vessels use the Rhine, with traffic of about 300 vessels a day at Mainz (where Emerald Star entered the Rhine from the Main).

In the photo above, note the green channel buoy and the illuminated navigation marker on the river's right bank.

The passenger ship Heinrich Heine is operated by to 1AVista Reisen, a German company based in Cologne. We haven't traveled with 1AVista, but we're intrigued by the line's river cruises for dogs and their families. (What could be more German than a holiday with your Hund?)

We could see the lipstick-red lips beneath the bow of A-Rosa Brava, another German ship, as we cruised past.

(Germans seem to have a thing for kissable vessels: AIDA, the German subsidiary of Costa Cruises, also displays lips on its ships.)

Loreley Elegance, a sightseeing boat of Loreley-Linie, sails on the route Boppard-Loreley-St. Goar-Rüdesheim. Here, the boat is cruising past Burg Rheinfels at St. Goar, a castle ruin that is open to the public.

We heard a toot, and our captain responded with a blast of the ship's horn. The reason: Scenic Jade, a vessel of Emerald's sister line, Scenic Cruises, was about to pass us on its way south from Amsterdam.

Scenic Jade is the eighth "Space-Ship" in the Scenic fleet. It was built in 2014, the same year that Emerald Star entered service.

Other ships that we passed included Amadeus Elegant of Lüftner Cruises, Viking Lofn, Stip Reizen's Allegro, Uniworld's River Empress, and Feenstra Rijn Lijn's Rotterdam.

Passenger vessels weren't the only ships and boats that we saw during our morning on the Middle Rhine: Here, a pilot boat sails heads south on the river. (Official pilots are required on vessels whose captains aren't licensed to operate ships on the Rhine.)

We learned that river vessels, including barges, are required to display a blue sign when passing on the starboard (as flipped up on Emerald Star's wheelhouse above).

Police boats patrolled the river, looking for scofflaws.

The Rhine also had its share of waterborne car traffic.

For a while, we went inside and warmed up in the Pool area, which offered nearly unobstructed views of the passing scenery and river traffic.

A door led from the Pool area to a platform overlooking Emerald Star's winches and Maltese ensign on the stern. The view was great, and the ship's hull offered shelter from the headwind.

The only problem came when we wanted to go inside: The door had locked behind us, trapping us on our exposed overlook. Fortunately, a lady by the pool heard our knocking on the door and let us in.

We knew that we were close to our day's destination when Emerald Star passed a Koblenz boat landing on the city's outskirts.

A few minutes later, we rounded a bend and approached the downtown Koblenz waterfront.

Our captain spun Emerald Star around, using his remote console on the Sun Deck, while cable cars of the Seilbahn Koblenz crossed the Rhine overhead.

In a minute or two, we were snugged against a pontoon along the riverfront promenade.

Across from our mooring, atop cliffs overlooking the Rhine, the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress guarded the city.

Sailors from Emerald Star secured the ship to the pontoon, which was attached to the shore by a permanent gangway.

On shore, the sailors tied Emerald Star's remaining lines to bollards amid the bustle of a flea market.

We had an hour before our scheduled walking tour, so we went ashore and investigated the flea market.

The city-sponsored Flohmarkt had something for nearly everyone, from clothing to typewriters to secondhand American license plates.

The flea market attracted a wide range of shoppers--everyone from young couples looking for baby clothes to elderly hoarders.

Nearby, just a few meters from our ship, the lower station of the Seilbahn Koblenz (a.k.a. Koblenz Cable Car) attracted a steady stream of customers.

The cable car, which opened in 2010, has 18 cabins and can carry 7,600 people per hour in both directions between downtown Koblenz and the Ehrenbreitstein fortress.

At 2 p.m., we went ashore and joined a group for a walking tour of Koblenz. Our guide, Joachim, looked natty in his straw hat.

One of our first stops was the Deutschherrenhaus (now the Ludwig Museum of Koblenz) which once belonged to the Teutonic Order, also known as the Teutonic Knights, a Catholic religious and military order dating back to the 12th Century.

From the Deutschherrenhaus, it was only a short walk to the Kastorkirche, or St. Castor's Basilica, which is the oldest church in Koblenz.

A wedding was just wrapping up as we approached the church, and a tourist train waited to take guests to the reception.

Our tour included a visit to the Görresplatz, a square that is said to have been settled since Roman times.

The square's centerpiece was the Historiensaeule, or History Column, by Jürgen Weber, which was installed in 1992. The bronze column rises from the central fountain of the Görresplatz and chronicles the history of Koblenz from Roman times until the city's rebirth after the destruction of World War II.

The History Column and the fountain are well-integrated. (This sculpture could be labeled "The face that launched a thousand spits."

From the Görresplatz and its fountain, we walked to the Jesuitenplatz, where (to judge from the shops and cafés) God and Mammon had reached a state of peaceful coexistence.

The Jesuitenkirche or St. Johannes der Täufer (a.k.a. the Jesuit Church) had a deceptively simple appearance until we looked closely at the portal with its carvings of St. Michael, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. John the Baptist, and St. Francis Xavier.

Nearby, the Rathaus or Town Hall featured a fountain, the Schängelbrunnen, which spits a water stream at regular intervals (soaking unsuspecting passersby).

The character atop the fountain is a Schängel, or Franco-German child, from the 20-year period (1794-1813) when Koblenz belonged to France.

After getting an overview of downtown Koblenz, we walked a few blocks to the Moselle riverfront and headed toward the Deutsches Eck ("German Corner"), where the Moselle discharges into the Rhine.

We passed a beer garden that was setting up for a televised match between Germany and Italy in the 2016 UEFA EURO football tournament.

On our left, a local sightseeing boat cruised into the Moselle from the Rhine.

The municipal flea market had spilled from the Rhine waterfront onto the Deutsches Eck.

The equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I at the Deutsches Eck is a modern replica of the original, which was damaged by U.S. artillery fire in World War II. (See Wikipedia's article for details.)

Having paid our respects to the late emperor and his horse, we walked to the Seilbahn Koblenz for a five-minute trip across the Rhine to the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress.

The cable-car ride began in the lower station of the Seilbahn Koblenz, near the Deutsches Eck and Emerald Star.

The cabins circled through the station without stopping (like chairs or gondolas on a ski lift), and passengers stepped aboard under the supervision of a Seilbahn employee.

Each of the Seilbahn's 18 cabins held a maximum of 35 passengers, but ours wasn't nearly that crowded, and we were able to get a front-row seat.

We grabbed this snapshot of Emerald Star from the cable car right after leaving the riverfront station.

The views from the cable car were stunning as we crossed the Rhine and climbed 112 meters or 367 feet to the Ehrenbreitstein fortress.

At the Seilbahn's upper station, we followed a short path to the Festung Ehrenbreitstein.

Ehrenbreitstein is newer than it looks: Its medieval predecessor was destroyed by the French in 1799, and work began on the current fortress in 1817, when the Prussians made Koblenz a key military installation on the Rhine.

Stone arches and steel entrance gates led us into the Festung, which is said to be Europe's largest fortress complex after Gibraltar. During times of full mobilization, Ehrenbreitstein had a combat strength of 1,500 soldiers and 80 cannons.

The military is long gone from Ehrenbreitstein. During our visit, the staff of Theater Koblenz were setting up for a production of Jesus Christ Superstar within the fortress walls.

The Oberer Schlosshof, or Upper Castle Courtyard, houses a museum and a restaurant-casino. Just around the corner, in the Niederer Schlosshof, is the Jugendherberge Koblenz, the city's official DHJ youth hostel.

Our guide said good-bye, leaving us to enjoy the panoramic viewing terrace overlooking the Rhine. (Note the inevitable "love padlocks" below the safety railing.)

We put Cheryl's Sony RX100 IV camera in "Panorama" mode to capture this view of the Rhine, the Moselle, the cable car, and central Koblenz. (Click here and maximize your browser window for a larger image.)

We used the maximum 30X telephoto setting of Durant's Sony HX90v pocket camera to take this picture of Emerald Star from the fortress.

The HX90v also let us grab telephoto snapshots of the Seilbahn Koblenz's lower station, the Deutsches Eck, and a boatyard on the Moselle.

We wanted to spend the rest of our free time in downtown Koblenz before returning to Emerald Star, so we left the fortress.

The descent to Koblenz from Festung Ehrenbreitstein was, if anything, even more dramatic than our earlier ascent. (In this photo, you can see a river ship, Viking Lofn, moored next to the Deutsches Eck.)

We passed over railroad tracks and a barge laden with scrap metal as our cable car's gondola glided down and across the Rhine.

Reflections on our gondola's windows enhanced this view of Emerald Star as we approached the Seilbahn's lower station.

We spent the next 45 minutes or so walking around downtown Koblenz.

We had just enough time for a gelato at a local Eis mecca, eGeLoSia, where the line was long but the efficient and friendly staff kept things moving.

Shortly before "All Aboard" time at 5:45 p.m., we snapped this farewell picture of Ehrenbreitstein fortress with Emerald Star in the foreground. 

Emerald Star departed Koblenz at 5:45 p.m., leaving the waterfront and MS Bellejour (which had been shadowing us since Nuremberg) behind.

Within minutes, we'd rounded the Deutsches Eck and were passing the Königsbacher beer garden, which had a large television screen ready for the evening's Germany-Italy football match.

As we cruised down the Moselle, we got a fine view of the Kastorkirche, where we'd seen a bride and groom a few hours earlier.

We also saw the first of many cruise ships that we'd encounter on the Moselle. The Rigoletto belongs to a Dutch line, SijFA Cruises, and has been plying Europe's inland waterways since 1987.

We reached the Moselle River's first lock on the outskirts of Koblenz, about 45 minutes after leaving our mooring place near downtown.

At dinner, we enjoyed views of vineyard after vineyard--many of them steep enough to require ladders for workers who tended the vines and picked the grapes.

Niederburg Castle loomed over the town of Kobern-Gandorf, as did the Moselle Viaduct near Kilometer 20. (On the Mosel, as the Germans call the river, distance are measured from the Deutsches Eck in Koblenz.)

Later in the evening, the Crew Show emphasized comedy, and everyone (performers and passengers alike) had a good time.

A handful of passengers concluded the evening by watching the Germany-Italy football match on a large screen by the pool. (The match ended with a score of 1-1, and Germany won 6-5 in a penalty shoot-out.)