The whole boat

I finally got a picture of the whole boat!

Castles of the Rhine

This morning's agenda was billed as a scenic cruise through the Middle Rhine to see vineyards and historical castles.  I thought this might mean two or three castles but not so!  It seemed we would just finish taking picture of one castle and another would already be there -- and on both sides of the river!  Some of the castles are in ruin, but a number of them have been restored and a few even have hotels in them now.

I'll share a few castle photos:

Below are two castles that originally belonged to two brothers -- after a feud, they built a wall between the two so they didn't have to see each other!  It seems that ancient German stories or fairy tales never end happily -- and this was no exception -- everyone dies.

Next stop - Heidelberg

Our stop on Friday morning was the beautiful town of Heidelberg!  What a cool place!  The town is not on the Rhine River, but our tour included a 45 minute bus ride there.  Heidelberg is actually on the Neckar River so there was a gorgeous historical bridge there - and I love bridge pictures!

This is one of the gates to the bridge:

And this is the view of the bridge from upstream:

While Heidelberg has a great pedestrian shopping/restaurant area, we spent most of our time touring the castle:

Starts with S

Forgot to mention, we had to do a mandatory Safety drill on our first full day!  We passed, and, in fact, our "muster time" was apparently excellent.

We also are experiencing some amazing Sunsets!!!  #peacefuleasyfeeling

Mercedes Benz

We were able to select an optional tour allowing us to visit the Mercedes Benz factory located at Rastatt. The assembly part of the plant was not air conditioned so the heat was pretty intense.  However, the place is amazing!  In addition to building awesome cars, the plant itself uses so much automation and robots to ensure consistency and quality.

The company does not allow pictures in the plant, but did have a guest area with two cars on display. The sports car that lists for 174,000 Euros was locked but I did get to sit in this one below.  I was really hoping they would just let me bring it home.  Apparently I wasn't convincing enough.....

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is a beautiful city....of course, it seems like every place we visit here is beautiful.  I didn't know that Strasbourg is one of the capitals of the European Union, so we got to drive through the area with the European Parliament and their Court.

Next was the actual city center, with the beautiful cathedral.

The organ was gorgeous -- the organist actually has a door to sit inside this and play from there -- I'm not sure how one would keep their hearing that way.

Interestingly enough, the stained glass windows in the cathedral were taken out and hidden for safety during WWII.  And the real "Monuments Men" rescued them!!

At the entrance to the city center is a building called the Barrage Vauban -- apparently it sits on top of a "weir" which, best I can tell, means it is a small dam on the river.

The city is gorgeous!!

The Colmar Pocket Campaign

Apparently one of the important campaigns of WWII was the Colmar Pocket campaign.  Audie Murphy was a part of this campaign.  As we continued with the tour of his memorial and other key points of the battle, we were fortunate enough to be able to tour the museum as well as the American Memorial at a place called Sigolsheim.  We had an amazing guide (as are all of the Viking guides) who should be a history professor, she was fantastic in explaining so much of the impact of this battle on the war and on this region:

The Sigolsheim memorial was at the top of a hill and the view enabled us to see the relationship of all the towns that were a part of the battle.   The American flag flies over this memorial and there are also battalion patches for all the soldiers who fought here.   We are hoping to be able to find the Audie Murphy autobiographical movie when we get home.

Storks and the Alsace Region

There are lots of storks here!  And they are protected being that they are the symbol of this region of France, called the Alsace region.  In every town, we saw the huge nests as well as the huge storks that call those nests home.

We also learned that this is how babies are delivered in the Alsace!  Apparently, you leave sugar cubes on the window sill for the stork, and nine months later, the stork delivers a baby.  

Can you spell *H*O*T*

It seems that we arrived in Europe during an unusually hot summer (sounds suspiciously similar to the 'unusual' weather story that I got when I moved to Minnesota).  It has gotten over 90 degrees every day that we've been here.  Thankfully the ship and the tour buses have AC, but many of the things we tour do not.

#wearehavingaheatwave     #OMGitshot    #thatsplashpadsurelooksgood

Audie Murphy memorial

After a wonderful morning excursion to the Black Forest, we were fortunate enough to do the optional excursion to visit the Audie Murphy memorial.   Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier in WWII, but I didn't realize all the details of his heroism until yesterday.  France has put up a memorial on the site of the battle where he single handedly held off a much larger force of German soldiers for over an hour.

The internet is being painfully slow, so hopefully I can upload some additional pictures of the day.  Tomorrow we get to tour Strasbourg  AND do a tour of the Mercedes Benz plant -- I'm hoping they do free samples!

The Black Forest

Our first cruise excursion took us into the Black Forest.  We managed to do a short hike and enjoy the scenery....  we also learned a few things: The forest isn't black, it's mostly made up of evergreens.  The German word is Schwarzwald and means "black woods" simply because it was so dark in the forest


   

And we depart....

We finally got underway about 10 pm -- delay was due to some airline issues for six of our fellow passengers.  We went under the bridge seen below, the river level is down so we aren't really sure how they navigate this when the river level is up!

We were scheduled to go through four locks overnight. Due to our still trying to acclimate to the time zone situation, we did manage to see our journey through two of the locks.

Our home......

For the next week, we'll happily let someone else cook and clean......

Seriously, a kilt?

I think we are still in Switzerland :)

    But walking back to the hotel, we find this......seriously, a kilt?

Basel Minster

High on the banks of the Rhine is the Basel Minster, sometimes called the Basel Muenster or even the Basel Münster. This was a short walk from our hotel and well worth the walk. The architecture is amazing, particularly the roof tile. Conveniently, it was also adjacent to one of the city's Rheinefahre routes!

We still aren't sure if the clock was accurate -- it appeared to be about 40 minutes off.  Not sure how you re-set a sun dial!

The Rheinfahre

We had time today to do a small bit of exploring before we boarded our boat.  According to the "Top 10 Things to Do in Basel", the Rheinfahre is something to experience.

This little boat uses no form of "power" to ferry folks across the Rhine river, instead it uses an attached cable and the river current.  It was fascinating to watch....so of course, we had to ride it!  Total cost round trip per person was only 3.20 CHK, which with current exchange rates, was only about $3.25 USD.

Views from our crossing.....

Basel, Switzerland.....

The flight to Amsterdam went well, we both cat napped, but at least enjoyed the food and dessert! We had a long enough layover so that we didn't get stressed out (and also, more importantly, our luggage made it on the same plane that we did!)

Arriving in Basel was interesting as I had forgotten that Basel actually sits at the intersection of three countries (Germany, France and Switzerland).  Apparently, at the airport, you have to remember to go out the correct door -- one leads to taxis going to Switzerland and one takes you to France.   Even though travel books assure you that it is cheap and easy to just hop the bus into Basel, we elected to take the taxi, and are thankful that we could get dropped right at the Radisson Blu.  This is a complicated town to navigate.

Some interesting discoveries in our first few hours:

Mini Taxi -- no, thanks!  Cute, but don't think we would fit, much less our luggage!  We will be mindful of this when we call for a taxi to take us to the boat tomorrow!

We took a short walk and found the way to France.... I think we'll let the boat take us...

And we had a cool surprise waiting on us when we returned to our room!  I highly recommend the chocolate!

Anxious to board tomorrow and set "sail"!

at the gate!

We are at the gate, waiting to board.  First stop is Amsterdam, then hop a KLM flight to Basel..l hope we can get some sleep, but am not betting the farm!

And the packing has begun......

As you may recall from a post several years ago, one of us (ahem, me) might not be as organized in packing.  But with four days before departure, at least I've started.  And I'm prioritizing things like passports and camera......

Six days and counting.......

Just six days until we leave for our Viking river cruise (Basel to Amsterdam)!


Passports  -- check
Hotel reservations -- check
Scopolamine patches -- check
Packing...   um.....still working on that one.


Stay tuned!