(...)
We soon found ourselves walking along the river and the number of people, mostly Germans taking advantage of the weather. We particularly noticed that as we stopped at a Beer Bar-Restaurant prior to walking into the Ludwig Museum outside premises, housed in the first branch of the Teutonic Order in the Rhineland. We strolled around St. Castor Basilica's gardens situated right beside it so as to get courage enough to get back to the train station.
One first and last look at the Ehrenbreitstein on the other side of the river, we might have reached by cabble car had we had time to further spend in Koblenz, made us realise we had so much more to see.
Once we were back in the old town we came across quite a few interesting artistc pieces, one of them being a sandstone relief said to have decorated the Rheingold Hotel. The tavern scene depicts a sociable togetherness and cultural exchange of the burghers during the Gründerzeit. The relief is probably a last witness of the long gone 19th century glamorous epoch of the Rheinstrasse. The second one was the Historien säule, a marvelously carved fountain which depicts the various epochs the actual city went through, from the Roman castellum settlement to today's perspective.
I wish we had had time to thoroughly visit the Jesuiten Platz and its church, whose façade was particularly beautiful. All and all I just wish we could have spent at least an extra day in Koblenz because we had fallen in love with the city and a whole array of monuments, churches, fortresses and fountains (just to mention a few of the things we didn't have the opportunity to thoroughly look at) were "waiting" for us.
