Seattle to Amsterdam in 10 hours on a Delta Airlines Boeing 767-300 was good and fast - just like we wanted. I could have used more leg room, but I'm too cheap to pay for it :) Viking Cruises met us at Schiphol baggage claim, and led us out to the van (a Mercedes mini-van), which took us to the ship. The "Viking Sun" was moored in downtown Amsterdam, a short walk from the "Red Light District" but we passed on that, listening to orientation lectures and dinner at 7.
Dinner turned out to be a pleasure not just because of the food, but because of the people you would meet. The tables sat 6, so different folks would eat with you during the week, including Jack Davis, a 91 year old B-29 pilot, and his 90 year old wife, Edna (a WASP who flew B-26 and B-24).
We left Amsterdam at 11 PM and were tied up at Kinderdijk
on the Lek River in the morning. After breakfast we went on a tour of the windmills and watched a short film showing how the windmills pumped water to different levels and finally into the rivers of Holland (which seems to be a delta of the Rhine/Meuse/Scheldt rivers, and the Lek being a part of the system).
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| Speyer, I think.... |
After the windmill tour the "Viking Sun" cast off and we motored up the Waal River toward Nijmegen and joined the Rhine at the German border, unfortunately at night.
After breakfast, we tied up in Koln (Cologne), Germany, and organized walking tours went to the cathedral, which was the tallest building in the world when it was finished. We passed a archeologist dig of Roman ruins and the Koln town hall, which looked very Roman.
Speaking of which, our guide told a story about how the Romans called people from the east bank of the Rhine 'barbarians'. Even today, the people of the west bank consider their east bank neighbors a bit inferior.
The Koln Cathedral was very large and very beautiful. It is built with local sandstone, and requires careful cleaning, so there is usually scaffolding on it somewhere.
Inside, this Gothic building were large stain glass windows that were made possible because of the thin walls supported by the 'flying buttress'.
After the tour finished (which included the interior and it's relics - the remains of the 3 wise men, we were told), we had a cappuccino in the sun at an outdoor restaurant, and sat in wonder of this old church.
That night, after dinner, we did a guided pub crawl in Koln, where the locals brag about their own special beer, Kolsch, which is "a clear beer with a bright straw-yellow hue, and it has a prominent, but not extreme, hoppiness. It is less bitter than the standard German pale lager. Furthermore, Kölsch is warm fermented at a temperature around 13 to 21°C (55 to 70°F) and then cold-conditioned, or
lagered. This manner of fermentation links Kölsch with some other beer styles of central northern Europe, such as the Altbiers of northern Germany and the Netherlands". So says Wiki :)
We passed Dusseldorf and Bonn at night, a minor disappointment, and entered that famous stretch of the Rhine where castles and vineyards seem to be everywhere. The "Public Address" would come on and announce the castle and it's story - most of them were sacked by Louis XIV, it turns out.
The next town was Speyer where we walked on our own into town. We passed their Cathedral and went into a shopping street where cars were limited - but taxis and delivery trucks were not. Jane purchased a nice sleeveless blouse as the weather was warmer that we had planned. We ate some ice cream and people watched until it was time to return to the boat.
There were other stops along the river, including Braubach, Rudesheim (with their famous spiked coffee), Mannheim (with a side trip to Heidelberg), and Breisach (which had two side trips - one to the Black Forest in the morning and one to Colmar, France, in the afternoon - guided by a Welshman). Jane and I passed on the Black Forest and walked around Breisach including it's church up on the top of a hill. There is a great view of this pretty town from the hill. The town was 85% destroyed during WWII but you wouldn't know it.
