Rhine River 2019

One last lazy day. Only one item on the agenda for the day. (OK, two items, but the second one wasn’t until evening so it doesn’t count.) We breakfasted at our favorite bakery and headed off to the Rijskmuseum – THE place for Dutch (and other) art with collections spanning from 1100 to 1900. (For […]

Today we had no set times so we felt free to sleep a little late, linger over breakfast (back to the bakery for more quiche), and make decisions as we went along. Also, we were a little sore. So we decided that taking advantage of trams was an OK alternative to spending another day walking

We slept in this morning (go figure) which compressed our itinerary a bit. Up, showered, and out the door we headed down the block and around the corner to a bakery that we had spotted yesterday. Cheryl had a veal quiche and I had a chicken quiche – and a chocolate croissant. Then, because of

We were up with the alarm (6:30) showered, packed and ready to leave the state-closet by 7:30. So we headed off to breakfast. We had a final breakfast with the friends from Arizona that we met the first night, said our good by’s and retrieved our luggage in time to leave our room (and the

Another slow morning. The first event following breakfast was the 10:00 “disembarkation talk” – telling us how to leave the ship, selling us half-price vouchers for futures cruises, showing us slide/video presentations of highlighted trips, etc. Following lunch we took a nap (the morning being so stressful) instead of packing. We’ll do that in the

Today started late. We were due to dock in Cologne by 8:30 but it was more like 11:00 when we finally arrived in port. As soon as we docked we headed out on a city walk. This is probably a good time to mention that Cologne was celebrating the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of

In case you’re interested, here are a few shots of castles along the Rhine Gorge. They mainly date to the 14th and 15th centuries. Originally they were locations where river traffic was “invited” to stop and pay “tolls.” Many are in ruins now. Some have been (at least partially) restored and serve as hotels, restaurants,

Alarm or no we were up at the normal time and up to the sun deck to stake out our seats for this mornings cruise thru the Rhine Gorge – 14 miles with over 20 castles. We managed to save the table and send people down for breakfast in shifts and we were off at

Last early alarm – at least until tomorrow. We were up at the regular time, breakfasted, and on to the bus to Heidelberg. The boat was docked at Mannheim- the closest it could get to Heidelberg. We were joined on the bus by our guide who regaled us with history and interesting information about both

This was Strausborg day. It began much as any other day. (Our cruise director has promised that we only have one more day with an 8:30 excursion call.) We gathered and walked, en mass, about a half mile to where the busses were parked. It seems that another Viking boat was docked in our preferred