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Emerald Star Cruise PhotosFrom: Emerald Waterways cruise review: Nuremberg-Trier Day 6: Moselle & Bernkastel
On the morning of Day 6, Emerald Star pulled alongside the Moselle's banks at Traben-Trarbach to unload bicycles for an optional tour of 22 km (14 miles) to Bernkastel, where our ship would be mooring in a few hours.
A car and trailer were on hand to provide logistical support (including spare bikes if required).
About a dozen bicyclists set off on the tour while swans watched from the embankment.
As the bicyclists followed the riverside route to Bernkastel, Emerald Star cruised past a succession of vineyards and villages.
In mid-morning, Emerald Star's executive chef, Teodor Petre, gave an Apfeltrudel-making demonstration in the Horizon Lounge for passengers who preferred sweets to scenery. (The finished Strudel was served at lunch.)
The Moselle River was busy (though quieter than the Rhine), with traffic that included cargo barges, cruise ships, and sightseeing boats.
A police boat patrolled the river.
We passed by a highway bridge that was under construction...
...and under an older bridge that was so low that the captain retracted the wheelhouse and ordered passengers on the Sun Deck to sit down. (The captain is in the top photo, wearing a baseball cap as peers out from the wheelhouse's sunroof.)
In some places, the land was flat enough for the use of mechanical equipment in the vineyards, and for buildings along the shore.
Many vineyards had small chapels. These dated back to a time when Christians were expected to attend church several times a day, and it was easier to have the workers pray or listen to sermons in the vineyards than to send them into the nearest village.
Our final lock before Bernkastel was at Zeltingen, near Moselle Km 120. (In the lower photo, you can see Emerald Star's putting green on the Sun Deck as the ship enters the lock.)
Cheryl Imboden took photos as Emerald Star floated upwards in the Schleuse Zeltingen.
As we reached Bernkastel and our mooring, we saw several other river vessels, including Amalyra of AmaWaterways and the German ship A-Rosa Flora.
Bernkastel has two districts: the old village of Bernkastel on the right or eastern bank of the Moselle, and the district of Kues (once a separate town) on the left or western bank. We were about to tie up at a waterfront park on the Kues side of the river, near a bridge that connected the two parts of town.
Captain Mariceanu skillfully guided our ship into its mooring place just ahead of A-Rosa Flora. (In the lower photo's background, you can see the bridge between Kues and Bernkastel's Altstadt.)
Once the ship was lined up with the shore, Captain Mariceanu called to passersby on shore, who caught a mooring line that was thrown by the crew.
Passengers from the bicycle tour arrived while Emerald Star's sailors were setting up the gangway.
We had an hour before our 2 p.m. walking tour, so we went ashore and wandered through the park, where swans and other waterfowl ignored the presence of two river vessels as they looked for food.
Our walking tour of Bernkastel began at 2 p.m., with local guides meeting us at the ship and leading us over the Moselle bridge to the town's historic center.
The guide for our group was a Frenchwoman from Paris who now lives in Bernkastel. Durant couldn't help thinking of the World War I song, "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)"
A vintage advertising sign on a building near the waterfront inspired a double-take.
No tourist town is complete without a tourist train.
Our first stop in Bernkastel was at the Markt, a cobblestoned square with half-timbered buildings in the village center.
Most of the restored houses surrounding the Market Square date to the 17th Century, but one--the Spitzhäuschen or "Pointed House," with its upper stories wider than the ground floor--was built in 1416.
The building façades and signs in Bernkastel's village center may look like imports from a German Disneyland, but they're the real deal.
The manholes, however, are more modern.
Bernkastel's romantic atmosphere brings in tourists of all ages and species.
At the Rathaus, or Town Hall, iron shackles from the days of public pillories encourage visitors to behave themselves.
During the walking tour, our guide led us into the back streets of downtown Bernkastel. Here, a 1968 bronze statue by Hanns Scherl pays homage to bears, which are the town's heraldic symbol.
Another fountain, also modern, complemented the half-timbered houses and ice-cream shop behind it.
Our guide told us about the floods that have plagued Bernkastel and Kues over the centuries. (In the lower photo, she indicates the level that floodwaters from the Moselle reached three days before Christmas in 1993.)
Next, our guide led us above town to the Doktorkeller of WWe. Dr. H . Thanisch, which was excavated from a slate hillside in the early 1600s. According to legend, a local winegrower offered his Riesling as medicine to the Archbishop-Elector of Trier, Bohemund II, who was on his deathbed at Bernkastel's Landshut Castle. The archbishop recovered and rewarded the vintner with the appellation "Doctor" for his wine, which has gone on to become a world-renowned brand. Bernkasteler Doktor is still being produced by the Thanish wine estate, although these days the wine is prized more for its flavor than for its medicinal qualities.
Talking about wine had given us a taste for wine, so it made sense that our tour wrapped up with a wine-tasting at the Probier- und Studierkeller of Weingut Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler.
We sat at tables in a deep cellar while a wine expert from Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler described each of the wines that we were tasting.
We sampled four wines. Here are descriptions, abridged from the winery's notes: 2010 Ürziger Würtgarden Riesling Spätlese Dry 2014 Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler Riesling Feinherb 2013 Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Spätlese 2004 Bernkasteler alte Badstube am
Doctorberg Riesling Auslese
By the time we'd sampled (and enjoyed) all four wines, our host was starting to look blurry, but we managed to find our way out of the cellar without embarrassing ourselves.
After the wine-tasting, we had about two hours of free time before the evening's disembarkation briefing. We decided on a walk to the ruins of Burg Landshut, the castle overlooking Bernkastel and the Moselle.
On the way up through the vineyards, we saw a sign that pointed back toward the Old Town, so we figured that--with luck--we wouldn't get lost the way we did in Miltenberg.
As we climbed higher, we caught glimpses of Bernkastel's roofs and river vessels (including Emerald Star, on the far side of the Moselle) from the path.
The walk was easy, with broad cobblestoned steps in the lower reaches and a paved road in the final stretch. (Later, we saw a man ascending the road in a motorcycle-style electric wheelchair with his wife providing extra horsepower from behind.)
At the top of the road, a stroller was parked next to a bench. From here on, visitors had to climb metal steps to a walkway surrounding the ruined castle, which was undergoing renovation. (The castle was built in 1277 but was destroyed by a fire in 1692.)
A Coke machine was placed strategically along the walkway for visitors who might be thirsty after the long hike up to the castle. The price for a soda was reasonable by European standards: €2,--. Note: Normally, the castle has a restaurant-café in the inner courtyard, but it was closed during our visit (probably because of the construction work).
A window in Burg Landshut's ruined walls offered a view of the Moselle, Kues (on the left), and Bernkastel's Altstadt.
A viewing terrace presented sweeping views of the town and river.
From above, the Bernkastel riverfront was surprisingly ugly, with most of the flat land (other than the Altstadt itself) being devoted to parking lots. Bernkastel's city fathers might want to consider gussying up the riverfront with flower beds, trees, and a pedestrian promenade to break up the expanse of asphalt.
The Kues riverfront was more attractive, thanks to a waterside park.
Before leaving Burg Landshut, we took this panoramic photo from the viewing terrace. (Click here and maximize your browser window for a larger image.)
We walked downhill by a different route, following a road that passed St-Anna Kapelle (a.k.a. the Chapel of St. Anne), which was built in 1890 to replace a chapel from 1615.
If we'd preferred riding to walking, we could have taken the Burg Landshut Express, a bus on a truck chassis that runs at hourly intervals during the day from April to October.
As we walked down through the steep vineyards, we could see that another ship, Tauck's Inspire, had moored next to Emerald Star.
We arrived back at our ship at 6:00 p.m. about two hours after the end of our Bernkastel walking tour.
The evening's "Farewell Gala Dinner" featured a cruise-ship classic, Baked Alaska.
After dinner, we went for a walk. The Moselle's water was calm, offering clear reflections of Emerald Star and Inspire. Note: River ships often tie up in pairs when there aren't enough berths for separate moorings. When this happens, passengers on the waterside ship (Inspire, in this case) walk to and from shore through the reception area of the landside vessel.
From the waterside park, we could see reflections of a passing barge and a cruising swan.
On the opposite hillside, the floodlights of Burg Landshut came on as the sun began to set.
The sun set quickly, and more lights were reflected in the river.
After walking through the mostly modern district of Kues, we crossed the bridge to Bernkastel's Altstadt, where the traffic light on the waterfront had already been turned off for the night.
The Markt was deserted. Even the tourists were tucked up in their hotels before 11 p.m.
As we aproached a floodlight fountain in the Old Town, a nearby church bell rang 11 times. While the bell was ringing, a timer shut off the floodlights and the water in the fountain.
We crossed the bridge and went back to Emerald Star, which would spend the night in Bernkastel-Kues before sailing for Trier the next morning.
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