There's such a thing as too many castles

In fact, there's such a thing as too much or too many of anything. Even things that are really cool. We visited the Rhine River where there are so many castles in such a compact area that pretty soon, we were completely saturated. The sad thing is that if you encountered any one of them, one at a time, it would be a great adventure. When we planned our days along the Rhine, I thought we could spend days exploring the dozens of beautiful castles in the area near St. Goar where we stayed. From our pension, we could see three castles. Along a ten mile stretch of the river, there were well over a dozen castles in various conditions - from ruins to restored to period conditions to renovated hotels. In the end, though, there was really just one that we'll remember for a long time.

Rheinfels Castle was an enormous compound that supported a huge community of people. There are lots of foundations and walls left, lots interesting history to learn. But, ultimately, it's about your personal experience. The absolutely best part of our visit was crawling through tunnels built outside the castle walls that historically were packed with explosives and then ignited at just the right time to blow up the attacking enemy. They were Medieval booby traps, and we were going down there!

We descended into the 3 foot tall tunnel (even Anna had to duck) with our single candle and the LED flashlight included on our cheap Spanish cell phone. Our information wasn't entirely clear about the correct path to follow, so some of us got the jitters and we backed out. Then we gathered courage - okay, so there might have been some subtle coercion - and back down we went. This time the scary tunnel was a little less scary. We peeked down the side tunnels where the castle guards packed gunpowder; we wondered if we were going the right way; we made scary noises for each other; we crouched even lower to get through narrower sections. We giggled with nervousness and delight. Eventually the tunnel surfaced once again, and we could relive the tunnel moments over and over throughout the day.

Sure seeing how the knights lived was cool. Seeing where they poured hot tar on the approaching enemies was cool. Seeing the apothecary, and the spinning wheels and looms and armor was great. Seeing a concrete example of all that stuff you read about in children's books about castle life in the Middle Ages - yes - that's pretty cool. But none of it will match the experience that we four shared down in the tunnel.