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 .....