On our last day of the Rhine River Cruise, Laura and I toured the Old Town of the city of Colmar in France and the Black Forest in Germany. Colmar is a lot like Strasbourg – it was not bombed during the Second World War and features relatively intact medieval architecture. In fact, at first…
In the part of Europe we were in as of August 14, one of the first things tour guides talk about is the percentage of a city that was bombed out in World War II. In much the same way that a guide in Manhattan might mention the average value of homes along a certain road, the…
On August 13, we visited our first city in Germany, and the following day we sailed down castle row on the Rhine. To visit the German city of Cologne, we got our first taste of a more extended excursion from our river cruise boat. The boat dropped us off north of Cologne to take fancy double-decker…
On August 12th, our cruise with Viking down the Rhine and its tributaries truly began, and it would last for a week. The week we would spend on the cruise ship would be the first time Laura and I would stay in same place for a week straight since July, so we were eager to…
On our second day in Amsterdam, we had to move to the Viking boat at the harbor to begin our cruise down the Rhine the next day. We dragged our luggage back down the road toward the harbor by the train station, stored it on the boat, grabbed the free lunch that was offered, and…
Last Monday we moved on to Amsterdam, which was terrific. It was much better than I was expecting, and I was expecting, well, Amsterdam. It is a very fun city, with a lot to do, and with many friendly people, most of whom seem to speak English fluently. The first sign that Amsterdam would…
On Sunday we woke up early to take the train to Bruges. We managed to navigate both the metro by the hotel and the train station, in spite of naming conventions used by both that seemed designed to confuse tourists. For example, our train left from the “Midi” station in Bruselles (their central station), but…
On Saturday morning, we woke up fairly early to take the train to the main Paris train station. We thought it would be a good idea to grab a baguette and some coffee for the ride, so I headed to the local bakery, which supposedly opened at 8 am, at a little after 8. Apparently…
A couple of years ago, I won a grant to be used to study the parts of Europe that were centrally responsible for historic European conflict and for European unity today: France, Germany, and the Low Countries in between. The trip for that grant began on August 5th. In order to maintain my marriage, Laura…
By the Monday of our Caseville trip, power still hadn’t been restored, so people moved closer to the lake where they could bathe and/or pee without having to carry buckets of water to fill the tanks of our toilets, which were on a well. Oh, and there were some recreational uses of the lake as…
