Author: NLAdmin

This was a busy day, altho is started with relaxed sight seeing from the boat. The morning was dedicated to floating through the most scenic section of the Rhine, one featuring steep hills on both sides, many of them covered with grape fields, and also a great many castles. Some of the hillsides with grapes were terraced due to pitches approaching 60 degrees.

My camera for this trip, a Fujifilm X100F, is a rangefinder style with a 35mm fixed lens. It’s a great camera, weighs one pound, and shoots excellent images. But this morning I wished for my Sony a7 with a zoom lens.

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After the fabulous sail through the castle region, we disembarked at Koblenz for a short visit.

“Koblenz is a German city on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle, a multinational tributary.

Koblenz was established as a Roman military post by Drusus around 8 B.C. Its name originates from the Latin (ad) cōnfluentēs, meaning “(at the) confluence”.[3] The actual confluence is today known as the “German Corner”, a symbol of the unification of Germany that features an equestrian statue of Emperor William I. The city celebrated its 2000th anniversary in 1992.

It ranks in population behind Mainz and Ludwigshafen am Rhein to be the third-largest city in Rhineland-Palatinate. Its usual-residents’ population is 112,000 (as at 2015). Koblenz lies in a narrow flood plain between high hill ranges, some reaching mountainous height, and is served by an express rail and autobahn network. It is part of the populous Rhineland.”

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We also visited a local winery, enjoyed a view high above the river on the way, got to taste wine from local grapes.

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Our boat docked at Mannheim. We were bused from there to Heidelberg. A bit about this city:

“Heidelberg (German: is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students.[3]

Located about 78 km (48 mi) south of Frankfurt, Heidelberg is the fifth-largest city in Baden-Württemberg. Heidelberg is part of the densely populated Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region.

Heidelberg University, founded in 1386, is Germany’s oldest and one of Europe’s most reputable universities.[4] Heidelberg is a scientific hub in Germany and home to several internationally renowned research facilities adjacent to its university, including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and four Max Planck Institutes.[5] The city has also been a hub for the arts, especially literature, throughout the centuries, and it was designated a “City of Literature” by the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.”

Our tour guide hit us at our first stop with his opening installment of German Royals history. It was cold and windy. The group shifted uncomfortable. A five minute walk to another stop, we paused for our 2nd installment of what was, to my dismay, another deep dive. Fifteen minutes of droning later, Eileen and I were two blocks away and moving fast. Most of our group were close on our heels. I suspect that by the 3rd stop, he was pontificating to empty air.

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A short visit to this town, known for it’s natural hot springs. Our group didn’t have time to actually get into the water. (Plus, it never occurred to me to bring my swim suit). It’s also known for its casino(s).

(From wiki:) “In 2021, the town became part of the transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name “Great Spa Towns of Europe”, because of its famous spas and architecture that exemplifies the popularity of spa towns in Europe in the 18th through 20th centuries.

The springs at Baden-Baden were known to the Romans as Aquae (“The Waters”) and Aurelia Aquensis (“Aurelia-of-the-Waters”) after M. Aurelius Severus Alexander Augustus.”
In modern German, Baden is a noun meaning “bathing” but Baden, the original name of the town, derives from an earlier plural form of Bad (“bath”). (Modern German uses the plural form Bäder.) As with the English placename “Bath”, other Badens are at hot springs throughout Central Europe. The current doubled name arose to distinguish it from the others, particularly Baden near Vienna in Austria and Baden near Zürich in Switzerland.”

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Our first tour after embarking. Strasbourg, which is actually in France, is big. Our date of arrival was auspicious, being Unification Day in Germany (the fall of East Germany and the Berlin wall, the end of the cold war), a major holiday. We were warned. It was really crowded. Half of Germany seemed to have come over the border to visit.

Strasbourg sits right on the Rhine. Over the centuries, it went back and forth, back and forth from being first in “France”, then in “Germany”.

“In 2020, the city proper had 290,576 inhabitants and both the Eurométropole de Strasbourg (Greater Strasbourg) and the Arrondissement of Strasbourg had 511,552 inhabitants.[8] Strasbourg’s metropolitan area had a population of 853,110 in 2019,[4] making it the eighth-largest metro area in France and home to 14% of the Grand Est region’s inhabitants. The transnational Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau had a population of roughly 1,000,000 in 2022. Strasbourg is one of the de facto four main capitals of the European Union (alongside Brussels, Luxembourg and Frankfurt), as it is the seat of several European institutions, such as the European Parliament, the Eurocorps and the European Ombudsman of the European Union.”

We all got bused over from the boat. Our tour guide, a young female, tormented us on the bus with impossible to understand trivia, delivered at crushing volume. Her inanity continued once in town. I didn’t wear an earpiece, so I just tagged along, taking pictures. The Old Town offered up the same kind of old architecture and ambience as Zurich and Basel. The main attraction was Cathédral Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, a very old church of enormous proportion. So large it was hard to take a picture of it.

Photo gallery links show up in a separate tab, in “light box” format. Click any photo for a large version. Close the tab when done, and you should be returned to this tab again.

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The river cruise from Basel to Amsterdam: a new experience for Tim and Eileen. Fairly swank, 5 star food and service.

The boat – a prototypical Rhine River cruiser. There are many outfits plying the river, but all use the exact same boat, probably made in the same ship yard. The Rhine has a lot of locks. These boats (and every boat) have to fit inside a lock.

135m long, fairly narrow. Rooms on three levels. We were in “steerage” on the bottom. Room very tight, but functional. Level two held the lobby and the formal dining room. Level three held the bar, informal dining, and general hanging out. Level 3 also had the beloved Coffee Bar machine, a beast that ground fresh coffee and could make six different types: espresso, latte, Americano, chocolate, etc. We preferred this machine to the coffee served at table for breakfast.

The bar was “open”. No limits. We heard many a champagne bottle pop – for breakfast! The breakfast buffet was stunning. Over 30 different things to choose from. Custom omelettes. Lunch could either be semi-formal in the dining room, or a buffet at the bar. A person could stay drunk all day and eat nothing but fancy desserts if they wanted to debauch. In the wrong crowd, this could have gone wrong, but the average age was 72, and half the passengers were Canadians. There were no fist fights. Dinners were semi-formal and the food was outstanding.

We often formed up with a few couples that we sought out, but we also sat with complete strangers. Everyone was friendly, considerate, interesting. The crew was relentlessly cheerful and helpful. There were no native English speakers on the crew, from the lowest room cleaners to the boat manager and captain. I’m not even sure that any of them were from central Europe. Indonesia, the Baltics for sure. But everyone could communicate well enough.

The boat often cruised at night so that we’d be in port for daily outings. There were two, sometimes three options. Still, we often cruised at least part of the day as well, the boat going along down stream at ~11mph. There was something addicting about watching the scenery drift by.

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