The highlight of a Rhine River bicycle tour might be the Rhine Gorge, aka Upper Middle Rhine Valley, the whole of which is yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. If there’s an all-purpose worldwide travel bucket list, it’s these World Heritage Sites. There’s such a variety of nature, culture, and history. You’d sure learn a hell a lot about the world if you were to visit them all.
Ferda and I weren’t always very good about sticking with Rhine during our tour. Just a day after joining the Rhine in Basel, we were already tired of it and went into the wine villages in the hills south of Freiburg. Because of flood control measures in that area, there weren’t any villages right by the river, making the route a little monotonous. In some flat areas we cut straight across instead of doggedly sticking to the Rhine meanders. There are actually few meanders and little natural left about the Rhine. It’s been such an important transport route in Europe that the river’s been straightened and tamed for centuries in order to ease navigation.
