2017 European River Cruise
Sep. 1st, 2017 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWe took a Viking (brand name, not actual Vikings) river cruise down the Rhine, starting in the Netherlands and ending in Switzerland, though the only part of Switzerland we saw was the airport in the wee hours of the morning. We did have a lot of lovely excursions before that, though. I had already written up much of the blow-by-blow in emails to my parents, so I only need to slightly clean them up for posterity:
Amsterdam
We got here and dropped off our bags, had buffet breakfast, and went out into the city (via their lovely light rail system). We went to the Rijksmuseum and saw lots of Dutch art, including "The Night Watch". We took an open-top boat tour of the canals (Amsterdam has many, many canals). Not only did we get stroopwaffles, we got freshly-made-in-front-of-us stroopwaffles. We also walked a bunch of the tourist district and the flower market, where I had to remind Rebecca that US customs would not let us bring home a suitcase full of flower bulbs.
Point of note that we left Newark at 5pm and arrived at 7am Netherlands time (with 3 hours of bad plane sleep and a ten-minute power nap during the boat tour) but successfully conquered jet lag by staying awake until 8:30pm.
Cheese!
Day two: This morning (after a night of much-needed sleep), we took a bus through the countryside to a cheese farm. The family farm has 400 head of cattle and a big “howda” (gouda) cheese-making operation, making over a dozen varieties (pesto, cayanne, herb, truffle, etc). Among other things, the way they vacuum seal their cheeses means we could bring home some stinging nettle cheese and some 3-year aged gouda. And it turns out that the current Dutch cattle are cross-bred with American Holsteins, which were bred from Dutch cows to begin with!
Then we saw the windmills that operate the water locks for the Kinderdijk ("dike of the children") region. The main pump nowadays is a set of three giant electric-powered Archemedes screws, but the 700 year-old windmills are a UNESCO world heritage site and are kept in operation because they all still work. Not only are they really cool, but they're the backup to keep an area that averages 7 feet below sea level from flooding. We also learned that the Dutch hid Jews from the Nazis in the windmills, because the Nazis were afraid of the floods that would happen if the windmills stopped so they wouldn't go poking around in them.
The food has been delightful on and off the ship. They had some Dutch specialties at lunch, so Rebecca had a beef stew and I enjoyed herring with traditional garnishes (pickles, pickled onions, horseradish). And so much good cheese.
That evening, we came in second in the “Family Feud”-style trivia contest, which was ideal. First prize was champagne, which we're only whatever on. Second place was Riesling, which we love (and is way more appropriate for the area anyway).
Cologne
Day Three: By mid-afternoon, Rebecca headed off to the fragrance museum (unsurprisingly something Cologne is known for), while I had headed back to the ship. We spent the morning on a two-hour walking tour of the central part of the city, mostly surrounding the massive cathedral. Then we had lunch at a traditional Brauhaus (I had smoked and fried pigs knuckle, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut; Rebecca had beef in raisin wine sauce with potato dumplings and applesauce. All was delicious, though the dumplings were a bit odd. We've now found two kinds of sauerkraut Rebecca likes, which is impressive given she doesn't like the usual American stuff.) We then went to the Roman Germanic Museum (long before the was a German city, a Roman colony sat in the same spot, and they've uncovered many ruins), saw all the artifacts and stained glass in the great cathedral, and got ice cream. (High quality gelato, because this is Europe and they don't stand for the lousy stuff.)
The city is amusingly multicultural--there was actually a Chinese festival going on while we were here, complete with the Falun Gong protesters we see all the time. I saw three Thai restaurants and a place selling curry schnitzel.
The centerpiece of the Roman collection is a mosaic tile floor that was apparently discovered during WW2 as they were trying to dig a bomb shelter. It's so well-preserved that they once held a meeting of the G8 on it. (It was during Clinton's term, so the naked satyrs and maenads were acceptable.) The also have a zillion pots and gravestones, and an impressive amount of intact glassware. Roman glaziers apparently knew their stuff. Also there was jewelry that wouldn't be out of place at a modern craft fare, bowls that Pottery Barn might still be selling, and the "hall of heads", because they couldn't come up with a better idea for the busts than to just line them up.
The cathedral's central artifact are the bones of the magi, and a lot of the city's special holidays revolve around them. 1/6 is a big day. We couldn't see the actual bones, of course, but the golden, gem-encrusted casket is enough to inspire holidays all by itself. The massive cathedral also has a dozen small shrines to various saints and the graves of various archbishops, and some of the most spectacular stained glass I've ever seen.
I will likely try more beer before the day is out, but I don't have particularly high hopes. I'll stick to wine going forward, I think.
Castles, wine and beer
Day Four: This morning we toured Marksburg castle, the only castle on the Rhine never to be taken, so completely intact. Fully furnished; tiny but very cool. (Only eight or so people would have lived there.) All tricked out, though - kitchen, cannons, chapel, master bedroom, dining hall, blacksmith, torture chamber, gardens, armory. Very cool. We bought ARR most of his souvenirs here, but opted out of the boffer morningstar.
This was followed by a leisurely cruise down the Middle Rhine. It's insanely beautiful, and there's a castle literally every ten minutes. We're lounging on the deck as the cruise director gives us running commentary, and they come by every few minutes with drinks and ice water and ice cream. It's positively idyllic.
At the end of that, we docked and took a quick walk into the tiny nearby town while our boat made a good show of trying to parallel park with another Viking cruise ship. We then joined a combined group from both boats (30 people or thereabouts) and took a bus to the monastery and winery we were going to tour. This was the Eberbach Abbey (literally "boar-stream" as a boar jumping over the nearby river three times was the holy sign that they should build here), where the movie "The Name of the Rose" was filmed. Apparently, it was a monastery until 1803, then a prison, then a mental hospital, then reconstructed by the state as a museum; and the vineyards have been active for most of that. We saw the old wine presses and drank the local Riesling wine (80% of the area's wines are Riesling) down in the candle-lit wine cellar, then went next door to their restaurant for a lovely dinner.
We met a family from the other boat, who we first noted because they were actually in our age bracket--the daughters and their boyfriends were doing the cruise with their parents ahead of one of their weddings. They turned out to be theatre people, which despite the fact that the mother strongly reminded me of my father’s cousin (and not in a flattering way), made for lovely dinner conversation.
Additional Castles!
Day Five: Today we docked in Heidelberg and visited their castle, partially destroyed but now home to a Michelin-starred restaurant and a winery (and the world's largest wine cask, which is no longer used because it apparently makes terrible wine). The local royals played a big role in the Protestant reformation and (as was common) heavily interbred with the British royals. Heidelberg is a major college town, so we got to hear a lot about stupid things German fraternities do, including giving each other fencing scars as marks of pride.
We then went down into the town proper and got lunch: pork schnitzel (fried but without a breading, and with a cream sauce), spätzle (much better than the ship's attempt), bratwurst, weissewurst (with a brown sugar mustard that really made it), bockwurst (spiced veal sausage) and a frankfurter with more good sauerkraut. Also a bread dumpling that clearly shared a common ancestor with a matzah ball. There was also a white beer (weissebier) I found tolerable, but all considered, I'd rather be drinking any of the five Rieslings I've tried here thus far.
We then did a bit of important shopping, purchasing some frutengummi to bring home as gifts, and some cake to eat as soon as we were able. I'll note that one of the cakes at the famous bakery was a crumb cake (streuselkutchen) that looked just like mom's, only filled with a layer of cream. Clearly another food with a common ancestor.
Then Rebecca explored the town of Speyer, which I gather was unimpressive, and I did some relaxing.
Food tour of Strasbourg
Day Six: Strasbourg is technically in France. I say technically because it was originally German and has changed hands half a dozen times. Now they actually have their own dialect (which appears on the street signs along with French) and are in many ways a merged city.
The tour was through the central part of the city, which is actually an island and entirely a UNESCO world heritage site. We stopped at a street market (not very different from the ones at home, but with more sausages and crepes) to try a breakfast bread called kougelhopf (aka "turban head", apparently named because one of the magi lost his turban and a baker turned it into a mold. Or because racism.) It’s a sweet, quick-rise yeast bread and we got a recipe so we can try it ourselves.
We then headed to Christian's, a chocolate and pastry shop, where the pastries were beautiful and the truffles were the size of baseballs, but we were sampling raspberry and creme freche ice cream.
We sauntered around and stopped to get bread, cheese and desserts, then to the wine cellar for lunch. By that, I mean first lunch. Brie, bleu, an ash cheese and a comte (a hard cow cheese), all fantastic. Pretzels, baguette, rustic bread, fruit bread. Three wines, and we bought some of the gewürztraminer (only €12!) to bring home.
We then toured the cathedral, Notre Dame de Strasbourg, noteworthy for having only one spire. Not as many shrines, plenty of magnificent stained glass. Turns out that the Alsace time zone is actually a half-hour off from the surrounding area, so we got to see their giant clock (one of the oldest working mechanisms in the world) chime the hour and move its various marionettes. We then got a little break to walk around and burn off a little of the food and buy tchotchkes.
Second lunch was flammenkuchen (or tarte flambee), an oven-fired cross between pizza and a crepe. The classic is with creme fraiche, onions and bacon. They also did a variant with gruyere cheese on top of that, and a sweet version with apples and cinnamon on the creme fraiche and a liquor flambee after baking. (Double-flammen kuschen?)
Our last stop was for Gingerbread with traditional seven spices: ginger, cloves, mace, cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon and anise. Also candied ginger and citrus peel. Apparently a traditional favorite is toasted gingerbread with foie gras and a sweetened sauerkraut chutney. (With more Gewürztraminer.)
The last part of the tour walked through the "Little France" part of the city. It is lovely and picturesque and apparently "the little french" is an old slang term for syphilis, as they used to quarantine sufferers there.
Upon our return to the ship, we were in time for their “German feast.” It was a buffet, which was good and bad, in that we got to try a little of everything, but also, we ate everything. Schnitzel and spaetzel and pork knuckle and pretzels and three kinds of kraut and more cheeses and other things I can't even remember. They also had my mom's cucumber salad, which was some of the only greenery present. The desserts were lackluster, as most of the cakes were dry, except the poppy seed variation of Poma's cake, which I wish I'd had room for more of.
We rolled back to our room.
Leisurely last day
Day Seven: This morning, we had a very light breakfast, and Rebecca headed off to the tour of the medieval village of Colmar. Adorable little medieval French town. Think the opening number of Beauty and the Beast. I enjoyed a few hours of additional downtime, and then we had a bus tour of the Black Forest.
We stopped at a horse changing station turned tourist trap. There was a forest walk it was raining too hard to go on. Obligatory cuckoo clock demo / sales pitch. Berry wine tasting, glass blowing demo, Black Forest cake making demo. We tried some cake - like many European cakes, it was a dry thin genoise, with a sharp kirsch, mounds of unsweetened whipped cream, and not enough cherries. We rather prefer the American version. (Although its the first time I've said that on this trip, most of the food had been amazing. )
Overall
I found this all very restful and relaxing--there's a lot to be said for having no real responsibility for a period of time. (And I've eaten a ton of cheese and sausage and my insides haven't punished me for it, which likely says a lot about the impact of stress.)
We were definitely the youngest guests on the ship. I wasn't expecting us to be the youngest people on our ship, but I was expecting it to skew older, and that's been okay. I've always been good at impressing people's parents.
We’d totally take another Viking cruise and recommend them.
Amsterdam
We got here and dropped off our bags, had buffet breakfast, and went out into the city (via their lovely light rail system). We went to the Rijksmuseum and saw lots of Dutch art, including "The Night Watch". We took an open-top boat tour of the canals (Amsterdam has many, many canals). Not only did we get stroopwaffles, we got freshly-made-in-front-of-us stroopwaffles. We also walked a bunch of the tourist district and the flower market, where I had to remind Rebecca that US customs would not let us bring home a suitcase full of flower bulbs.
Point of note that we left Newark at 5pm and arrived at 7am Netherlands time (with 3 hours of bad plane sleep and a ten-minute power nap during the boat tour) but successfully conquered jet lag by staying awake until 8:30pm.
Cheese!
Day two: This morning (after a night of much-needed sleep), we took a bus through the countryside to a cheese farm. The family farm has 400 head of cattle and a big “howda” (gouda) cheese-making operation, making over a dozen varieties (pesto, cayanne, herb, truffle, etc). Among other things, the way they vacuum seal their cheeses means we could bring home some stinging nettle cheese and some 3-year aged gouda. And it turns out that the current Dutch cattle are cross-bred with American Holsteins, which were bred from Dutch cows to begin with!
Then we saw the windmills that operate the water locks for the Kinderdijk ("dike of the children") region. The main pump nowadays is a set of three giant electric-powered Archemedes screws, but the 700 year-old windmills are a UNESCO world heritage site and are kept in operation because they all still work. Not only are they really cool, but they're the backup to keep an area that averages 7 feet below sea level from flooding. We also learned that the Dutch hid Jews from the Nazis in the windmills, because the Nazis were afraid of the floods that would happen if the windmills stopped so they wouldn't go poking around in them.
The food has been delightful on and off the ship. They had some Dutch specialties at lunch, so Rebecca had a beef stew and I enjoyed herring with traditional garnishes (pickles, pickled onions, horseradish). And so much good cheese.
That evening, we came in second in the “Family Feud”-style trivia contest, which was ideal. First prize was champagne, which we're only whatever on. Second place was Riesling, which we love (and is way more appropriate for the area anyway).
Cologne
Day Three: By mid-afternoon, Rebecca headed off to the fragrance museum (unsurprisingly something Cologne is known for), while I had headed back to the ship. We spent the morning on a two-hour walking tour of the central part of the city, mostly surrounding the massive cathedral. Then we had lunch at a traditional Brauhaus (I had smoked and fried pigs knuckle, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut; Rebecca had beef in raisin wine sauce with potato dumplings and applesauce. All was delicious, though the dumplings were a bit odd. We've now found two kinds of sauerkraut Rebecca likes, which is impressive given she doesn't like the usual American stuff.) We then went to the Roman Germanic Museum (long before the was a German city, a Roman colony sat in the same spot, and they've uncovered many ruins), saw all the artifacts and stained glass in the great cathedral, and got ice cream. (High quality gelato, because this is Europe and they don't stand for the lousy stuff.)
The city is amusingly multicultural--there was actually a Chinese festival going on while we were here, complete with the Falun Gong protesters we see all the time. I saw three Thai restaurants and a place selling curry schnitzel.
The centerpiece of the Roman collection is a mosaic tile floor that was apparently discovered during WW2 as they were trying to dig a bomb shelter. It's so well-preserved that they once held a meeting of the G8 on it. (It was during Clinton's term, so the naked satyrs and maenads were acceptable.) The also have a zillion pots and gravestones, and an impressive amount of intact glassware. Roman glaziers apparently knew their stuff. Also there was jewelry that wouldn't be out of place at a modern craft fare, bowls that Pottery Barn might still be selling, and the "hall of heads", because they couldn't come up with a better idea for the busts than to just line them up.
The cathedral's central artifact are the bones of the magi, and a lot of the city's special holidays revolve around them. 1/6 is a big day. We couldn't see the actual bones, of course, but the golden, gem-encrusted casket is enough to inspire holidays all by itself. The massive cathedral also has a dozen small shrines to various saints and the graves of various archbishops, and some of the most spectacular stained glass I've ever seen.
I will likely try more beer before the day is out, but I don't have particularly high hopes. I'll stick to wine going forward, I think.
Castles, wine and beer
Day Four: This morning we toured Marksburg castle, the only castle on the Rhine never to be taken, so completely intact. Fully furnished; tiny but very cool. (Only eight or so people would have lived there.) All tricked out, though - kitchen, cannons, chapel, master bedroom, dining hall, blacksmith, torture chamber, gardens, armory. Very cool. We bought ARR most of his souvenirs here, but opted out of the boffer morningstar.
This was followed by a leisurely cruise down the Middle Rhine. It's insanely beautiful, and there's a castle literally every ten minutes. We're lounging on the deck as the cruise director gives us running commentary, and they come by every few minutes with drinks and ice water and ice cream. It's positively idyllic.
At the end of that, we docked and took a quick walk into the tiny nearby town while our boat made a good show of trying to parallel park with another Viking cruise ship. We then joined a combined group from both boats (30 people or thereabouts) and took a bus to the monastery and winery we were going to tour. This was the Eberbach Abbey (literally "boar-stream" as a boar jumping over the nearby river three times was the holy sign that they should build here), where the movie "The Name of the Rose" was filmed. Apparently, it was a monastery until 1803, then a prison, then a mental hospital, then reconstructed by the state as a museum; and the vineyards have been active for most of that. We saw the old wine presses and drank the local Riesling wine (80% of the area's wines are Riesling) down in the candle-lit wine cellar, then went next door to their restaurant for a lovely dinner.
We met a family from the other boat, who we first noted because they were actually in our age bracket--the daughters and their boyfriends were doing the cruise with their parents ahead of one of their weddings. They turned out to be theatre people, which despite the fact that the mother strongly reminded me of my father’s cousin (and not in a flattering way), made for lovely dinner conversation.
Additional Castles!
Day Five: Today we docked in Heidelberg and visited their castle, partially destroyed but now home to a Michelin-starred restaurant and a winery (and the world's largest wine cask, which is no longer used because it apparently makes terrible wine). The local royals played a big role in the Protestant reformation and (as was common) heavily interbred with the British royals. Heidelberg is a major college town, so we got to hear a lot about stupid things German fraternities do, including giving each other fencing scars as marks of pride.
We then went down into the town proper and got lunch: pork schnitzel (fried but without a breading, and with a cream sauce), spätzle (much better than the ship's attempt), bratwurst, weissewurst (with a brown sugar mustard that really made it), bockwurst (spiced veal sausage) and a frankfurter with more good sauerkraut. Also a bread dumpling that clearly shared a common ancestor with a matzah ball. There was also a white beer (weissebier) I found tolerable, but all considered, I'd rather be drinking any of the five Rieslings I've tried here thus far.
We then did a bit of important shopping, purchasing some frutengummi to bring home as gifts, and some cake to eat as soon as we were able. I'll note that one of the cakes at the famous bakery was a crumb cake (streuselkutchen) that looked just like mom's, only filled with a layer of cream. Clearly another food with a common ancestor.
Then Rebecca explored the town of Speyer, which I gather was unimpressive, and I did some relaxing.
Food tour of Strasbourg
Day Six: Strasbourg is technically in France. I say technically because it was originally German and has changed hands half a dozen times. Now they actually have their own dialect (which appears on the street signs along with French) and are in many ways a merged city.
The tour was through the central part of the city, which is actually an island and entirely a UNESCO world heritage site. We stopped at a street market (not very different from the ones at home, but with more sausages and crepes) to try a breakfast bread called kougelhopf (aka "turban head", apparently named because one of the magi lost his turban and a baker turned it into a mold. Or because racism.) It’s a sweet, quick-rise yeast bread and we got a recipe so we can try it ourselves.
We then headed to Christian's, a chocolate and pastry shop, where the pastries were beautiful and the truffles were the size of baseballs, but we were sampling raspberry and creme freche ice cream.
We sauntered around and stopped to get bread, cheese and desserts, then to the wine cellar for lunch. By that, I mean first lunch. Brie, bleu, an ash cheese and a comte (a hard cow cheese), all fantastic. Pretzels, baguette, rustic bread, fruit bread. Three wines, and we bought some of the gewürztraminer (only €12!) to bring home.
We then toured the cathedral, Notre Dame de Strasbourg, noteworthy for having only one spire. Not as many shrines, plenty of magnificent stained glass. Turns out that the Alsace time zone is actually a half-hour off from the surrounding area, so we got to see their giant clock (one of the oldest working mechanisms in the world) chime the hour and move its various marionettes. We then got a little break to walk around and burn off a little of the food and buy tchotchkes.
Second lunch was flammenkuchen (or tarte flambee), an oven-fired cross between pizza and a crepe. The classic is with creme fraiche, onions and bacon. They also did a variant with gruyere cheese on top of that, and a sweet version with apples and cinnamon on the creme fraiche and a liquor flambee after baking. (Double-flammen kuschen?)
Our last stop was for Gingerbread with traditional seven spices: ginger, cloves, mace, cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon and anise. Also candied ginger and citrus peel. Apparently a traditional favorite is toasted gingerbread with foie gras and a sweetened sauerkraut chutney. (With more Gewürztraminer.)
The last part of the tour walked through the "Little France" part of the city. It is lovely and picturesque and apparently "the little french" is an old slang term for syphilis, as they used to quarantine sufferers there.
Upon our return to the ship, we were in time for their “German feast.” It was a buffet, which was good and bad, in that we got to try a little of everything, but also, we ate everything. Schnitzel and spaetzel and pork knuckle and pretzels and three kinds of kraut and more cheeses and other things I can't even remember. They also had my mom's cucumber salad, which was some of the only greenery present. The desserts were lackluster, as most of the cakes were dry, except the poppy seed variation of Poma's cake, which I wish I'd had room for more of.
We rolled back to our room.
Leisurely last day
Day Seven: This morning, we had a very light breakfast, and Rebecca headed off to the tour of the medieval village of Colmar. Adorable little medieval French town. Think the opening number of Beauty and the Beast. I enjoyed a few hours of additional downtime, and then we had a bus tour of the Black Forest.
We stopped at a horse changing station turned tourist trap. There was a forest walk it was raining too hard to go on. Obligatory cuckoo clock demo / sales pitch. Berry wine tasting, glass blowing demo, Black Forest cake making demo. We tried some cake - like many European cakes, it was a dry thin genoise, with a sharp kirsch, mounds of unsweetened whipped cream, and not enough cherries. We rather prefer the American version. (Although its the first time I've said that on this trip, most of the food had been amazing. )
Overall
I found this all very restful and relaxing--there's a lot to be said for having no real responsibility for a period of time. (And I've eaten a ton of cheese and sausage and my insides haven't punished me for it, which likely says a lot about the impact of stress.)
We were definitely the youngest guests on the ship. I wasn't expecting us to be the youngest people on our ship, but I was expecting it to skew older, and that's been okay. I've always been good at impressing people's parents.
We’d totally take another Viking cruise and recommend them.
