River Cruise - Oct 9/14 - Rudesheim - last post!

On October 9, after a full morning cruising the Rhine Gorge, we arrived at "Rudesheim am Rhein", another great little town to explore.  We first went to the "Siegfrieds Mechanisches Musikkabinett", a museum for data-storage musical instruments, an exhibition of self-playing music and its instruments.  Here we saw and heard a cross-section from 4 centuries of self-playing instruments.  Very intriguing!

Those of us who chose to walk to the museum followed Jeremy Van Dyke, one of our journey managers, through the town.  Others chose to take the little tour train.

 

Paul, of course, had to stop and examine this old car outside the museum.

Webers Maestro, the orchestrion, weighing tons, features a Feurich piano, violin, solo pipes, cello, flute, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, lotus flutes, jazz trumpet, xylophone, and percussion instruments.  It was amazing!  You would think the whole orchestra was playing for you!

 The Hupfeld Violina Orchestra, only known original in the world, featured 6 violins as well as the player piano.

This was another fascinating piece - all of the figures were moving and either singing or playing instruments at the same time.

The Drosselgasse is the heart of Rudesheim's old town, a 144 metre long  pedestrian, cobblestone street.  It was built in the 15th century, and is lined with taverns and restaurants, and in summer there is always live music and entertainment and wall-to-wall people.  Now, it's late in the season and raining.  Not so busy!

Paul and I decided to take the cable cars to "Niederwaldennkmal", a monument overlooking the Rhine.  The cable cars ascended low over some grapevines to get to the park at the top of the hill.

 

A lovely view of the Rhine from the cable car.

Niederwaldennkmal, also known as Germania, was built to commemorate the foundation of the German Empire after the 30 year war. The first stone was laid in 1871 by Wilhelm I. The 125 foot high monument represents the union of all Germans. The peace statue is on the left, and the war statue is on the right, and the large relief beneath Germania is Wilhelm I on a horse, surrounded by nobility, army commanders, and soldiers.  It's an amazing piece of work, and I'm glad we went up to see it!

View from Germania.

One of the pretty flowers in the park.

A very good use of an old cable car!

 
And that, my friends is the end of a very long saga.
Until next time.......