Well it’s been another amazing journey through the country of Germany, visiting Christmas Shop after shop after more Christmas shops, but the final day has come. We kept it simple and slow, getting off to an easy late start and spending a lot of time figuring out travel plans. After that we did another walk … More Merry Christmas, Germany!

Well we made it to the final city and the end of the trip is nearly here. We left Nuremberg in the morning and made it south to the grand (and my favorite German city) of Munich. We checked in a bit too early and then headed straight for the central Marienplatz Christmas Market after … More Münchnermärkte

What a busy day! Tried getting up early and was mostly sort of kind of successful and heading off to the city of Würzburg. We noticed on our way to the train station an increasing amount of cold  fluffy white stuff on the ground. Now being from California I was quite unsure what this cold … More A Bavarian Winter

Got off to a nice and relaxed start, and spent some time checking out the neat and giant St. Lorenz church, and then went shopping at the Christmas Market and picked up a couple nice surprise gifts for ourselves! After that we went over to the Kaiserburg – Nuremberg’s famous castle on a big hill … More A Day Off

So today went quite a bit better than yesterday! We finally had a good night at the new hotel in Speyer, so we got and spent some time walking down the main street, it’s quite beautiful! We toured the famous Speyer Cathedral, Europe’s largest Romanesque style cathedral, which contains the tombs of nearly dozen Holy … More A Winter Wonderland – Snow!

-Finished off a bit of shopping in the Christmas Market in Aachen. -Got in taxi with a grumpy angry taxi driver to train station. -Took very long train ride to the city of Speyer -Took train most of the way back down the Rhine we came up on with all the castles, as well as … More Speyer

One city I have wanted to visit for a long time is the famed Kaiserstadt, the Imperial City known today as Aachen. (Ahh-chen, where the CH is pronounced with that scratchy back-of-the-throat growl). It is the westernmost city in Germany, and during WW2 Aachen was the first city in Germany to be invaded by the … More Have a Merry Aachmas

And dang was it big! After we left Amsterdam, we took a train towards the city of Dortmund, Germany. It’s not a real long ride, but once we got there we took a little bit to relax before heading into the big Christmas Market. I knew ahead of time that there was the big tree. … More The World’s Largest Christmas Tree

Well it was the final night of our cruise and we had a ton of fun, visiting the towns of Basel, Freiburg, Strasbourg, Gengenbach, Heidelberg, Rüdesheim, Cologne and Amsterdam! Today (yesterday) in the mid afternoon, we pulled into the capital city of the Netherlands – Amsterdam! We got off and walked around for a brief … More Christmas in Amsterdam?

Today (12/6/2019) we made it to the major Rhine city of Cologne. We had a neat but distant view of the cathedral from our ship the previous night when we pulled in and docked. The next morning we took a short bus ride into town which dropped us off right near the massive Cologne Cathedral. … More Churches and Markets