Exploring Bernkastel-Kues

We only spent a couple of hours driving today so we could spend the day in the pretty town of Bernkastel-Kues on the Mosel river. We parked up in a lovely terraced stellplatz just outside the town and arriving early meant we have a prime pitch overlooking the river. Unfortunately, we just missed morning check in so we had to do that between 4.30 and 5.30.

In the meantime, we walked about 3 miles along the river into the town to get some lunch and explore. The first interesting buildings we came to included Saint Nickolaus’s hospital for the poor.

We crossed the Mosel, looking up at the remains of Burg Landshut on the hill, and down on the ships on the river. As we walked up to the old marketplace, the first gabled timber framed building we saw was the Rathaus (town hall).

My favourite building was the narrow, pointed and wonky Spitzhausan (‘pointed house’), which was up a side street, just off the market place. However, many of the buildings were charming, with individual characters and colours. We thoroughly enjoyed wandering the narrow streets, although we were surprised it was difficult to find anywhere for lunch. All the cafes seemed to be selling ice creams!

We finally found somewhere to have a glass of wine and some food. With a little help from the waitress we chose the local knochentrocken (bone dry) white wine and some flammkuchen (German flat bread pizzas).

After lunch, we wound our way through the streets, then up a pretty tree-lined path to a small waterfall. The path then continued up to Burg Landshut.

The views of the town, vineyards and Mosel were lovely from the ruined castle. The castle itself was good to explore, and it only cost one euro each to go up the tower. Bargain!

On the way back down the hill to the town, we stopped at a weingut (wine tasting place) with great panoramic views. It was lovely sitting in the sunshine, enjoying another glass of knochentroken!

It would have been good to spend the rest of the afternoon wine tasting, in various weingut bars in the old town. Unfortunately, we had to get back to the stellplatz to check Bertie in… probably a good thing because we have to travel again tomorrow… not good with a hangover!

We walked back along the Mosel, past the stellplatz to pay at the winery that owns it. We’ve had a couple of hours relaxing and are looking forward to (perhaps) crossing a rather long Nepalese-style suspension bridge tomorrow.