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 :)