Koblenz

Adding to the list of 'German towns you've probably never heard of', our next stop was Koblenz. Considering it was our second preference, we were pretty happy with our campsite. It had a great view of the river and the fort across from it. 

And to our surprise, there was actually a lot of activity on the water with boats and cargo ships going past long into the night. They also had freight trains going past pretty regularly too. At first it was fine but as the night went on, the ships and trains got louder and louder to the point where it sounded like airplanes taking off (note: since then we have actually camped next door to an international airport in Italy but we'll get to that in another blog). So as you could imagine, we had a pretty lousy sleep that first night.

The next day we drove about 50Kms away to Berg Eltz, apparently the best preserved Gothic castle in Germany, which has been in the same family for over 800 years. Walking up through the forrest was pretty surreal. It was dense with greenery, very dark, eventually opening up to a magnificent view of the castle.

Unfortunately, we noticed something that had been plaguing us since the start of our trip and which has continued to do so right up until the writing of this blog… construction!!! Ah well, it doesn't ruin the photo that much does it?!

After our tour of the castle we made our way back to the campsite. Alice made yet another awesome dinner on the camping stove and I drank yet another delicious Belgium beer. It was a very pleasant afternoon on the river. 

Unfortunately at the same time our new neighbours (imagine shorter, podgier versions of Chris 'Finchy' Finch from THE OFFICE) decided to get a bit pissy and the more they drank, the louder they got. The louder they got, the more cr@p they talked. At about 10pm they started talking about how many women they'd slept with (including whilst married with kids), how their ex-wives didn't appreciate them (I have no idea why?!) and how much a lady of the night costs back home ("140 quid" in case you were wondering). They kept laughing and commenting that it was alright to talk about this stuff because no one in the campsite could speak english. So by 12pm when they finally decided it was time for bed Ali chimed in with a loud "Goodnight", unfortunately this just made them giggle like schoolgirls for another half hour. Ah, the joys of camping.