Preparing to head up--river on a white boat

The combination of drifting and planning works well.  Breakfast in Hotel Guenther in Boppard starts at 7:30 am (NOT at 7:29; this is Germany!). At 9:00 am a ship of the Koeln-Duesseldorfer fleet will leave from its mooring point right in front of the hotel and will take me through the Rhine valley (right by the Lorelei) to Bingen, where I should arrive at 13:00. At 13:47 I will board a train at Bingen Bahnhof (900 meters from where the ship arrives) and will arrive at Moerfelden-Walldorf at 15:07.

The Godesburg, my ride

Right now I'm sitting at breakfast (with a view of the Rhine and the promenade that was thoroughly cleaned at 6:30), reading in Wikipedia the story of Lorelei as told/invented by Heinrich Heine in 1924, while something Mozarty is playing on the streets outside or at low volume out of the heating ducts; I'm really not sure. These little towns along the Rhine all perform a well-rehearsed play. And judging by the MANY tourists speaking German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, and languages I don't understand or recognize, the play is performed well. Many ships will carry people by Lorelei today and maybe someone even hired a young woman with long blond hair to sit on top of that rock and comb her hair while humming or singing enchanting songs.   I'm not quite sure what brings all these Rhine tourists here (if not for Saint Malo, I would have been one of them ;-). While the natural surroundings are quite nice, there are boxes of PINK Geraniums EVERYWHERE, which are starting to drive me bonkers, because you can't take a picture of the river Rhine without them in it. And I have walked under enough grape vines artificially arranged over the streets and between houses now to last me a lifetime.

La vie en rose (sunrise with pink Geraniums)