Coming out of the Netherlands, we turned upriver onto the Rhine. Given the war histories and its position in Germany, the Rhine River is well known in America. The Romans named the Rhine after the River God: Rhenus. It is 478 navigable miles. It also doesn’t hurt that it is a featured river by the river cruise industry. Here is my goodbye picture:
The Rhine can be wide, but it narrows in places which were featured in past entries. But the sunset over the river was special.
From the Rhine, we turned onto one of its tributaries: the Main River … which will eventually take us to the Danube, the other featured river of this tour.
The Main River is narrower and much more quaint. Smaller towns that we would never see if we weren’t doing a river cruise. I can’t get the image of Geppetto and Pinocchio out of my mind… it’s a different country but the quaintness of their Disney village is a great mental fit.
There are over 50 locks on the Main River … they literally flatten out our ride.
Here is my model for this lock journey … a barge that shared our locks all afternoon.
Entering the lock, which seems to take up about half the river’s width.
A couple notes from the pictures above. It is easy to see the gate that closes the lock in the first picture behind the barge. The other thing to notice is the height of the barge as the water rises. By the third picture, the barge is almost at the top of the side wall. Finally, this lock is taking us upstream as the water in the lock reaches the level of the river.
Then it is back to rolling on the river, which will take us to the next lock.
The Adventures of Barry Brink 