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...
Europe Part 7 – Cologne, Germany
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),...
Europe Part 6 – Castles on the Rhine, Marksburg, & Koblenz Germany
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...
Europe Part 5 – Speyer & Rudesheim, Germany
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...
Europe Part 4 – Strasbourg, France
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...
Europe Part 3 – Black Forest (Germany) and The Colmar Pocket (France)
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...
Europe Part 2 – Basel, Switzerland
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...
Europe Part 1 – Munich and Dachau, Germany
Our European adventure started on Wednesday April 24th with a 6pm flight out of Chicago O’Hare, direct to Munich. Love that we can fly direct to Europe…when we lived in Rochester, we either had to connect somewhere or drive to Toronto to get a direct flight. We were joined...
Memphis – Music, BBQ, and the King of Rock & Roll! And Some Quilts, Too!
For our first day in Memphis, we headed to the birthplace of rock’n’roll, Sun Studio. This is the place where Elvis first recorded in 1953, and stars like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis were discovered. The tour took us into the exact studio where the “Million-dollar...
Hot Springs, a High School, and 42’s Library
- March 7, 2024
- Museum, NationalPark, RV, Travel
We packed up and left Mississippi Saturday morning. After all the rain on Friday, everything was caked in mud by Saturday morning. Yuck! Is that where Mississippi Mud Pie comes from? Shortly after we left the campground, I remembered that I had forgotten to latch the refrigerator…this is a...