We found real Leavenworth! ~ Libby and Tommy go to Europe

Ok guys, look at this. This is the view from our hotel room!

We get the river view and the castle view. The castle you see before you is Reichsburg Castle to be precise. More on that subject in a minute. If you will allow me one small moment of griping though. The hotel we are staying in costs more than we wanted to spend, but we had a really hard time finding somewhere to stay in Cochem. Also, the town center is over below the castle. It's about a 15-20 minute walk to the "main drag" as it were. There is a bus stop close by, so we'll probably take the bus sometimes. We've also run into a location where "WiFi provided complimentary" is a bit more complicated than advertised. And I (Tommy is talking here) am frankly sick of this happening. We get 30 minutes complimentary per 24 hour period. Three zero. So we are paying for unlimited internet, 3 € a day. Oh, wait. It's more complicated you say? Yup. This is PER DEVICE. Yup, another internet scrooge here in Germany. /Rant

Cochem is pretty much everything you would want a German town to be. There is a river, castle, half-timbered houses and wineries on the hillsides. The castle even has a winery.

So, we arrived in Cochem around 12:30ish. The train station is about 10 minute walk fromus than the center of town is, so we took a taxi from the station to the hotel. After we were settled in to our room, we made the trek into town. We got some lunch (chopped up bratwurst and pomme frittes) and stopped at the tourist information building and asked about the buses, river tours and Burg Eltz castle (we'll be going there the day after tomorrow). All of the seemingly helpful pamphlets we were provided ended up being in German, so we ended up looking up some of this information on the internet afterwards.

We decided to hike up to the castle. Rick Steves' Germany guide book describes two walking routes: A scenic route and a huff-and-puff route. We took the scenic route which had us huffing-and-puffing anyway!

The commanding Reichsburg

Part of the trail leading up to the castle. The whole walk smelled a lot like home.

The "scenic" route took us around the back of the castle

the view after we made it to the castle!

The castle isn't "historic" in it's current state, save for a single tower that dates back to its original construction, but it's quite resplendent in all it's "castely" glory. What we see today was built sometime after 1868 when a rich German, Mr. Ravené, bought it for 300 Goldmarks. In 1689 the castle was destroyed by French soldiers and was a ruin until the rich man bought it and restored it. In 1942, MR. Ravené's descendants were forced to sell the caste to the Nazi's. The castle is now owned by the town of Cochem.