Viking River Cruise Kinderdijk (Netherlands)  Day 6

 

Today was the longest day of cruising that we had experienced. After setting off from Cologne in the early evening, it was just after lunch that we arrived at Rotterdam - the Netherlands at last!

 

Our excursion today was to the beautiful UNESCO World Heritage site at Kinderdijk and again a stunning site to see a large group of windmills :)

 

 

Back on board we had our farewell dinner - the food was fantastic all cruise and then it was time to try and pack suitcases as we were to disembark in Amsterdam at 8 am the next morning.

 

 

We thoroughly enjoyed our first (and it won't be our last) river cruise!

 



 













Viking River Cruise - Day 6 Cologne

 

 

Cologne was magnificent. We arrived just after breakfast and went on a walking tour of the Old City. When we got to the Town Hall there were dozens of couples waiting to get married. Apparently it is a common practice on Fridays, then off to the Cologne Cathedral and an afternoon spent walking through the old town.

 

We left Cologne that evening - what a spectacular city

 



Viking River Cruise Braubach/Koblenz Day 5



 

This was a really special day as we cruised through the Rhine gorge. We left early and by breakfast time we were in the midst of the gorge and admiring the castles and scenery:

 

 

 

 

Our next stop was Marksburg Castle at Braubach - truly spectacular and worth all of the steps up and down :)

 

 

 

In the afternoon we arrived at Koblenz - junction of the Rhine and Moselle Rivers and spent the afternoon up at the fortifications and strolling around town. One thing that was a shame was that there was another Viking ship moored next to us and our view was into someone else's cabin. Not happy Jan!

 

Note to Viking - if I am paying for the rooms on the top floor then I expect to be able to see the view and not have a ruddy great Viking river cruise ship moored right next to me!







Viking River Cruise - Day 4 Mannheim/Heidelberg

 

 

After a night of passing through locks, the next morning found us well and truly in Germany and tied up at Mannheim.  Our morning excursion was the beautiful university city of Heidelberg on the Neckar River.  After the now familiar hubbub with tickets for buses etc we spent about 30 minutes travelling to Heidelberg. Peter and I had spent a couple of hours here on our last tour and we really wanted an opportunity to explore the city in greater detail.

 

Our first stop was Heidelberg Castle which was described as a ruin - a bit of a misnomer as there were still substantial parts of the castle that were intact:

 

We then spent some time wandering the cobbled streets and looking at all of the shops!  We returned to the ship for lunch and cruised to Rudesheim. In the evening we took the optional dinner tour to Rudesheim - it was great to have the little train pick us up and bring us back to the ship.  We enjoyed the optional tour but again nice but overpriced!

 

 







Viking River Cruise – Kehl/Strasbourg (Day 3)

Day 3 saw us firmly in cruise mode spending most of the day sightseeing and then travelling up the Rhine by night.J  We were still straddling the French/German border and moored at Kehl (Germany) in the wee small hours.

After breakfast (and the usual problems with allocation of numbers for buses!) we headed off to see Strasbourg, the largest city in Alsace (France). After a quick bus tour of the city environs, another beautiful medieval city centre was explored on foot and some incredible architecture on display

 

One of the highlights was undoubtedly the Strasbourg Cathedral with its astronomical clock which was incredible and well worth seeing if you are in the region

 

After a buffet lunch on the ship, we then set off on the optional tour to an Alsation winery and the old town of Obernai. The winery was a disappointment as the only thing we saw was the cellar containing old vats and sampled four wines.  Obernai was another lovely example of a medieval walled town – overall I felt that this optional was not worth the 49 Euro each!

Rhine River locks

As we travelled along the Rhine we were constantly travelling through locks on our way downstream.  After dinner on Day 3 we decided to go up to the sun deck and have a look at the scenery passing by. We were lucky that we were in a lock at the time and stayed up there to watch the ship travel through this one.  It was a strange sightseeing 2 river cruise lines (almost 200 metres in length) side by side in the lock with two tankers behind us!

 

The last photo was taken as we were travelling through the lock (roadway above us)

Viking River Cruise - Day 2 Breisach

 

 

Day 2 saw us moored at the German port of Breisach, nice and close for our morning excursion into the Black Forest. It was the day that we realised how difficult it is for people to follow simple instructions such as

1. Pick a number from a basket - if you want to travel together, make sure you pick a number from the same basket
2. Go and sit on the bus with the corresponding number, for example if you picked 2 then you went and sat on bus 2
3. You need to be ready to leave at 8:00 am

This would be a recurring and annoying theme throughout the trip as everyday we went through the same procedure and every day without fail, someone couldn't work it out!

We had a very scenic drive through the Black Forest and the countryside was so different to Jan 11 when it was under snow!

 

 

We visited a factory where cuckoo clocks were made:

 

We then returned to the ship and had lunch. There were two optional excursions in the afternoon:

 

1. World War 2 battlefield tour
2. Colmar tour

We had signed up for the Colmar tour. http://www.ot-colmar.fr/en/?lang=en

So across the border we trotted to France :)  Colmar is a very old and pretty town in Alsace and has a very chequered history as this region has been hotly contested between France and Germany for a number of centuries. This has resulted in the architecture reflecting aspects of both countries. It has a number of canals and our guide for the walking tour through the old part of the city was former Edison Lighthouse guitarist Andy Locke! There were some unusual old buildings:



 

 

and like most European cities it had a cathedral - St Martins

 We really enjoyed Colmar and would love to visit this area again :)

Viking River Cruise - Day 1

 

 

After our exploration of Basel it was time to set sail on our river cruise.  We caught a taxi out to the docking area at Dreiländereck only to find that we couldn't see our ship anyway. The information Viking gave us did mention that there was a second dock that they sometimes used so the taxi driver then took us up to there - diddly squat. At this stage we were starting to get worried! The lovely taxi driver rang the contact number for us and was told that the first docking area was correct - the Viking Sun was docked alongside another river cruise ship and could not be seen from the dock!

 

Note to Viking: perhaps some signage would be useful in cases like these - it's not like we have xray eyes and can see through one ruddy ship to the other. We were not the only ones caught out!!!!

 

After grateful thanks to the taxi driver and a few more Swiss shekels placed in his hand, we then boarded the first ship, walked across the lobby, across a gangway and arrived aboard the Viking Sun our home for the next seven days :)

 

The ship was well appointed with a lounge area, library and large dining room (below).  We loved the fact that you were not allocated to a dining table but were free to sit anywhere and we met quite a few lovely people over our copious meal breaks :)  The food was very good with lots of choices - we usually had lunch in the Lounge where they had a range of different foods each day!

 

 

 

Our room was on the third floor, quite roomy and with floor to ceiling sliding doors. Don't you love the swan on the bed?  This was the attention to detail that was common on this cruise.

 

After dinner we set sail for Breisach in Germany but that's a whole different saga .....