Schaffhausen

This was one of the hottest weekends we had yet experienced!
On the Sunday we decided it was time to look for somewhere to swim. A colleague from work recommended we make a trip to the Swiss town of Schaffhausen, although this was a complete misunderstanding! Alex had suggested we visit there as a point of interest, not necessarily a place to swim!!

If you look on the map, you will see that Schaffhausen looks as though it should be in Germany, but due to a squiggle on the border, it belongs to Switzerland.
I'm sure there's a long history behind this but I can't tell.. we haven't found a chance to look it up ;-)

Early Sunday morning, in serious anticipation to reach our refreshing destination, we picked up our friend Julia and headed to Schaffhausen!

Unexpectedly, PASSPORT CONTROL at the border!!
We were asked to produce our passports(fortunately we had these with us!) even though we were taking a small back road.
I mention this because when we took a more major road to Basel, there had been no passport control???

Driving into Schaffhausen, we searched desperately for any sign of water or a place to swim & COOL DOWN!

After following a sign board, we found a beautiful thing!


A (seemingly) major tourist attraction. Seemingly, from the way the crowds were swarming to & from the parking lot!
The attraction is a large castle, built on the top of a peak, on the corner of a turn on the Rhein river. Below the castle(in the river) are the Rhein falls.


The drop is 23m & the width 150m! Although the Rhein falls are not as high as some well known falls, these are a impressive & a beautiful feature!

Returning again to our adventure!

The parking area (its location) we chose, was a BIG mistake! All appeared well by judging the many tourists all around! But...
We had to walk 8oo meters to only the START of the castle & right here there was a parking area!

Our little exploring towards the castle was no problem! This was a comfortable downhill!
LOTS of WALKING ..A STEEP WAY DOWN & then UP AGAIN!

Being SUPER-HOT the paving & tar was BLISTERING-HOT!!
Liesel chose(& adamantly decided) to venture out withOUT her shoes!
Yip! She BURNT the soles of her feet!!(sounds almost like some weird medieval torture technique).
Completely contrary to this, a man(or TRUE GERMAN, so we commented..hAhA) was wearing socks with his sandals! :-)

Prams were strictly forbidden inside this castle, we curiously continued around the side, journeyed down, & then more down, towards the river! Followed the footpaths belonging to the train track running across this river.

SOOOOOO MUCH WALKING; SOOOOOO MUCH WATER!!!!
There was a large group of tourists gathered.

But we WALKED still further to see & watch people buzzing around, buying food, having maybe a little private picnic!
And enjoying super boat rides across the river to the island in the very centre of the falls!

Streams of people were climbing-up the island (in their well-ordered turns), after their boat ride.... & then enjoying a rushing ride with the falls from the top!

When venturing down through the inside of the castle, a boat awaits any that wish to ride across the river to this island!!!!!

We felt the spray from the falls! Down 'here' it was much cooler! Just at the entrance to the boat rides, we had a REFRESHING stop with an ice-cream! ;-)

BUT then... HILLS!!
On our way back Liesel & Julia were relieved when they agreed they'd had enough; the last hill was too much to brave after looong day in sun!!
I went ahead to get the car! ;-)

Looking upon beautiful, refreshing water, 6pm & a hour driving home in still 35°!
This was a perfect & pleasant day for doing a whole bunch of 'touring of the Rhein falls on the Rhein river'... but I DIDN'T HAVE MY SWIM :-(