Rhine River Cruise (4/3 - 4/14/25)

Now for a change of pace, we ditched the RV and flew to Amsterdam to ride the Rhine River on an Avalon Cruise. Our friend Heidi Buckler of Terrapin Travel organized the trip for us. We went with a group of friends we have known for more years than I want to count. We opted to add a couple of days extra on each side that started in the Netherlands and ended in Switzerland. This was certainly a trip to check multiple items on our bucket list including a first-time visit to Europe for Michelle and our first river cruise.

Amsterdam was where it all started and a pleasant surprise to us once we realized that biking the city was the way to go. Biking is by far the choice for travel and the city was built to handle it. Biking around the city there was much to see and do.

This was the view from our pre-cruise hotel where we could rent bikes to see the city.

Besides seeing the historic buildings and other sights, we had to sample a few of the many small pubs.

The city has many canals as well where you can catch a boat ride or sit in a outdoor patio to enjoy some cuisine and the views.

One of our pre-cruise excursions was a canal cruise to see the city from the water's perspective.

This city is built on pilings. If you look closely, you can see that some of these pilings are sinking somewhat, causing the buildings to lean a little (at least what our tour guide told us).

Another tour we did in Amsterdam was to see the Keukenhof Gardens during tulip season. You don't see them here, but this place was packed with people coming to see the flowers.

There were acres and acres of flower (not just tulips) varieties in the gardens that were in full bloom this time of the year (early April). Although I neglected to take pictures, we also visited the Anne Frank Museum one of the afternoons.

One of our first stops down the river on the cruise was to Cologne where we saw amazing architectures including the Cologne Cathedral pictured here.

Of course we had to catch up on what's going on with everyone. Not sure what I said to make Tom laugh so hard!

A common sight on the river were these caravan (trailer) campgrounds. That's probably where we would stay if we had our home on wheels over here. We would stand out like a sore thumb however, since most seem to be less than 30' long.

One of main things I wanted to see on this trip were the medieval castles and fortresses.

There are also quite a few monuments/statues to honor the past. This is a monument to Emperor Wilhelm I in Koblenz.

We had one cruising day from Koblenz to Rudeshiem where we saw over 23 castles in just a few hours. It was a little chilly this morning, but the sun was nice to take off a little of the chill.

One of the first castles we saw this day was Marksburg Castle.

Learning about the history of why these castles were built is quite interesting. Many were built just to levy taxes on ships passing through on the Rhine.

I wont comment on every castle photo, but most of them are perched on cliffs, strategically overlooking the river and towns below.

Once we arrived in Rudesheim, we took a hike to a nice overlook of the valley.

At the top, was a another huge history marker, called Niederwald Monument.

This was the view of the valley from the monument.

We saw trees like these in many places along this river. Did somebody actually trim these to look like this?

Sitting down for dinner...

One of the castles we actually toured inside was the Heidelberg Castle.

This is a view of the town of Heidelberg is from the castle walls.

This castle was built over 800 years ago and has had many additions and damage done to it through the many conflicts over time.

One of the interesting things about this castle was the huge wine barrel for serving guests. The various versions of these barrels could hold up to 60,000 gallons. I think I see Ken on top.

Once down in the town of Heidelberg, we could see the castle on the hill above.

In a visit to see some more recent history was to tour a fort on the Maginot Line. This was a backdoor entrance to the fort.

These series of underground fortresses were supposed to protect the border of France from Germany after WWI. They even used a small train system to move supplies to the various wings of the fort.

Built in the 1930's, they were to created to pose a substantial defense if attacked. This is the view behind the pill box at the entrance.

This is a view to the canon that had a 10 mile range. The large guns would arise from the ground to shoot. Germany didn't even try to conquer these installations and decided to attack France from other, less defended borders.

Another stop was to visit the city of Colmar, France where we toured the town's shops and pubs.

Every town/city we visited had some spectacular cathedrals.

After our cruise, we spent a couple of days in Zurich, Switzerland. Since we both had picked up some bug from the ship, we stayed low key and hung out near our hotel to rest for our next stop over in Scotland for a few days and will be better detailed in my next post.