Category: History

Windmills, cheese & wooden shoes – into the Dutch countryside

On Monday, our last full day in Europe, we took a 7-hour coach tour into the countryside around Amsterdam with Key Tours to see windmills and wooden shoe and cheese-making places. It turned out to be an excellent choice. The view out our hotel room overlooking the canal Prinsengracht...
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Exploring Cologne, Germany

We’re nearing the end of our cruise on the River Queen – a fact that most are trying to ignore. On Saturday, I woke up at 03:20 am and looked out our stateroom window just as we were passing under a huge bridge in a large city. Although I...
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A look at Koblenz and Marksburg Castle

We docked at Koblenz very early Thursday morning, and spent the day exploring the city as well as nearby Marksburg Castle and the massive Ehrenbreitstein Fortress that looms over the city. This was the view from our stateroom at 7:20am as we were about to go for breakfast. This...
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A quick look at Bernkastel, and cruising the Mosel

I enjoyed my walk around Bernkastel on Tuesday night but was looking foward to seeing it in the daylight too. The medieval center of town is wonderful. Some of the buildings have quite a tilt to them, especially this skinny one. Today was a day of funny signs, starting...
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Exploring ancient Trier, and sailing to Bernkastel

We spent two nights docked at Trier, Monday and Tuesday. One our first day there, we took a coach tour to Luxembourg, and the next morning we explored Trier by motocoach and on foot. I started this post with 44 photos because I had so much I wanted to...
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An excursion from Trier to Luxembourg

On Monday (October 15th), we reached our furthest point up the Mosel River, the city of Trier. We spent 2 nights there, with the afternoon of our first full day being spent on a motorcoach tour to Luxembourg (the country and the city of the same name). Like all...
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Rudesheim, and cruising the Rhine River castles

What a day this was! On Saturday, we spent the morning in the charming little wine village of Rudesheim, then cruised through a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the castle-lined 65 km of the Rhine River downstream from Rudesheim. After editing, I have 714 photos in today’s folder. That’s probably...
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A brief look at Strasbourg, Speyer and Heidelberg

The communities along the Rhine River are providing the bucket-list experience that we’d hoped for, and we can’t say enough good things about the ways that the crew of the River Queen makes it the best it can be. The weather could be a great deal better, but that’s...
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The Rhine River, Basel to Breisach

I’m behind on my posting now – it’s been very busy, and the Internet connection on the ship is very poor except when everyone else is on bed, and then only from the lounge, not ship-wide as they claim. Anyway, back to Basel for a final 2/3 of a...
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A day in Basel, Switzerland

Basel is a thrilling city – the history, the culture, the entire lifestyle, is wonderful. I really tried to keep the number of photos down for this post, but it just didn’t work for me – there’s so much I’d love to tell you, but there’s no time. So...
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