kygogirl

Has anyone ever gone from Cologne to perhaps Bonn on the Rhein River? Is that a possible day trip?

PalenQ

Yes I have and it is a very possible day trip - Bonn is a neat city with the Mozart House and a pleasant pedestrianized old town center. You can take the train back to Cologne rather than the longer boat ride upstream. the scenery is not nearly as great as on the classic Rhine boats thru the famous Rhine Gorge - between Rudesheim and Koblenz - and that is an easy day trip also from Cologne - simply take the train to Rudesheim and hop on the hourly or so boats and get off at Koblenz and explore that historic city at the confluence of The Rhine and Mosel Rivers - check out the famous Deutshces Eck monument right at the confluence - once had an equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm on it but an American GI for fun just after the end of WW2 blasted it to bits with ordance fired from the other side on the Mosel, where today's campground is. Now it is a monumnet to German Unity.

Really this is a much much more gorgeous - in a gorge most of the way with ruined castles and not ruined castles hovering high above and cutesy little riverside towns like St Goar and St Goarhausen and Boppard, etc that make for a nice break of journey - or at Marksburg to visit one of the few castles on the Rhine and Mosel not destroyed by Napoleon or other marauders thru the centuries.

A boat from Cologne to Koblenz takes all day and the scenery is mainly industrial - just like from Cologne to Bonn but I always find the Rhine fascinating because of all the various boats and I also like industrial complexes, like the huge Bayer plant the boat does by.

Check out these web sites for more on the Rhine boats - www.k-d.com (officdial site of KD boats that run most of the day trip boats) and www.ricksteves.com and www.budgeteuropetravel.com both have write ups on the K-D boats on Rhine and Mosel.

valtor

We were, but it was a night cruise, with music and dance, named "Rhine in flame". There were fireworks, many illuminated ships, burning medieval castles, Bengal town lightning.

For "normal" cruise from Cologne, see
http://www.kdrhine.com/rhineschedule.htm

ira

hi kyg,

>the scenery is not nearly as great as on the classic Rhine boats thru the famous Rhine Gorge - between Rudesheim and Koblenz.....<

I agree.

quokka

Between Cologne and Bonn there is no scenery. The landscape is flat and mostly industrial. Take the train to Bonn.

If you don't want to go as far South as the Middle Rhine gorge, the alternative is the valley just South of Bonn, which has a pretty scenic stretch along the Seven Mountains and the islands of Nonnenwerth and Grafenwerth. There are short round-trip cruises starting from Bonn upstream to Königswinter, Bad Honnef and Linz, for example with these guys: http://www.b-p-s.de/Fahrplan_anzeigen.php?lan=en. Linz is a pretty little wine town and a good destination for a stopover of one or two hours before returning to Bonn.

PalenQ

From Bonn you can take the tram along the Rhine to Konigswinter and then the aerial cableway up to the top of famous Drachenfels, a summit withy sweeping views all around. Konigswinter is a classy riverside resort town.