Near Lorelei, it doesn’t look too treacherous – but there is a story here. The tales of a woman named Lorelei in Germany’s Rhine River Valley date back several centuries. According to legend, many boats lie at the bottom of the Rhine River because of her. As the legend goes, in the narrowest and deepest point of the Rhine there once was a woman of such beauty that she would cause sailors to wreck their ships as they sailed the dangerous currents along the river’s jagged shorelines. Was it her long, blonde hair? Were sailors distracted because she lay sunbathing along the river’s edge? Or was Lorelei a siren who intentionally lured bewitched sailors to their doom by singing the loveliest song they had ever heard? Each version of the legend has earned a place in Rhine Valley lore. A woman beautiful enough to cause shipwrecks? That was worth checking out. The only problem was, I got there several centuries too late, and now all that is left of the legend herself is a statue sitting at the end of a narrow arm of land that juts out into the Rhine.