Monday morning May 6th, we were scheduled for a 10am canal boat tour. It’s one of those things you just have to do while in Amsterdam, “Venice of the North”! The weather was amazing once again, and it was a small group on our boat…plus the canals were very...

Sunday morning May 5th, we walked a short distance to catch the Metro. We were a bit surprised to learn that Amsterdam has a subway, given that the city is below sea level. It was a short subway ride to RAI Amsterdam, and it was there that we caught...

Once we left the ship, we took a Bolt (rideshare similar to Uber but more popular/common in EU countries) from the port to our hotel, and were thrilled that we were able to check in even though it was only about 10:30am. We got settled in and found a...

Friday May 3rd was our last full day on the cruise and it was rainy and chilly. We spent most of the day cruising which provided a good opportunity to start packing our suitcases. We cruised from Cologne to Kinderdijk in The Netherlands – the longest cruising distance between...

Unbelievable. We’re nearing the end of the cruise…Thursday May 2nd brought us to the fourth largest city in Germany, Cologne…or Koln if you are German! Our morning started with a walking tour that covered several key sites in the city, including Heumarkt (Haymarket) and Germany’s oldest rathaus (city hall),...

We welcomed the month of May with a cruising morning, enjoying a variety of castles along the Middle Rhine. There are 25,000 castles in Germany (more than any other country). We saw a lot, but we did not see all of them. Our program director, Billy Cruse (yes, his...

This brings us to the last day of April, and my 55th birthday. I can’t think of a more wonderful way to spend my birthday than on such an incredible cruise and vacation in Europe! It was a cruising day for the ship…we started the morning in Speyer, Germany...

On Monday April 29th, we woke up in Kehl, Germany which is just across the Rhine from Strasbourg, France which was our destination for the day. We started our morning with a bus tour around Strasbourg, which is the cultural capital of France’s Alsace region. The stork is the...

On Sunday April 28th, we woke up in Breisach, Germany and our morning excursion was to the Black Forest. Interestingly, no one really knows why it’s called the Black Forest…the most likely story is because of the densely packed trees, which are very dark green. This is the sunniest...

Saturday morning (April 26th), we packed up and headed to Hbf to catch our train to Zurich, Switzerland. We had our tickets, which of course were entirely in German, so I had already done the translations to figure out what track, car, and seats we needed to occupy! We...