A Trip to the Falls

On Friday, September 20th, I took the train again from cousin Brigitta's house to the main station in Zurich.  However, instead of doing more sightseeing in Zurich, I decided to go a bit farther afield.  I went into the ticket office of the Swiss Federal Railways, and asked about going to the town of Schaffhausen and the nearby Rheinfall, a waterfall along the Rhine River.  The gentleman in the rail office sold me a package ticket for round trip train travel to the two locations.  The ticket was good for anytime during the day, so I was not stuck to a set schedule.

The next train to Schaffhausen was leaving in about 20 minutes.  I had plenty of time to get to the platform and hop on the train.  It was a quick train ride... less than an hour... to get to Schaffhausen, a picturesque town on the Rhine.  But more about Schaffhausen later.  I wanted to visit the falls first.  They are located a few miles downstream, and I had to transfer to a train going to the next town, Neuhausen.  However, I did not realize that Neuhausen had more than one train stop, and I should have continued farther.  At the stop where I got off, there was a nice walking path along the Rhine leading to the falls.  It was a 20 minute walk to get to the falls, but it was a warm and sunny... a perfect day for a short hike.

 

As I came nearer to the falls, the calm river became more turbulent.

On a hillside overlooking the falls is a castle called Schloss Laufen.  The earliest reference to the castle is from the year 858, although it has been much changed since then. You have to pay admission to see the falls from there.  It seemed to me that in spite of the fact that the castle is very close to the falls, the view would be better farther down on this side of the Rhine.  So, I continued down the path.

I reached the point where the Rhine plummets over the rocks.

From here I descended a flight of steps, and then a promenade extended along the curve of the river.  There was an excellent view directly opposite the falls.

With a height of only 75 feet, the Rheinfall is certainly not the most impressive waterfall in the world, but it is the most powerful in Europe, with a flow of 21,000 cubic feet of water per second. 

There are boat excursions which take visitors right up to the waterfall.

Passengers can get off the boat at a dock on the small island in the middle of the falls.  They can then climb a staircase to the top of the rock.

It would have been an interesting experience, but I decided that I did not want to be soaked from the mist of the falls.

I was not looking forward to the walk back with plenty of steps to climb.  But then I discovered where the nearby train station was located, and there was even an elevator to avoid part of the climb.  After a short wait, a train came to take me to my next stop, Schaffhausen.