Category: History

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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A rainy day in Lucerne, Switzerland

On Saturday night we saw a superb weather forecast for Lucerne on sunday, prompting us to plan a day trip to take the Golden Round Trip to Mount Pilatus by train, boat, cogwheel railway, aerial tramway and bus. But… it turned out to be a very different day. First,...
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From Yukon wilderness to European history in 24 hours

On Friday morning, Cathy and I were looking out our window at the vast wilderness behind our home. Twenty-four hours later, we were walking along the Rhine River in Switzerland, looking at 750-year-old homes in a city of three-quarters of a million people. It’s an amazing world we live...
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