We leave for our Christmas Markets cruise on November 30, 2022 and arrive in Basel, Switzerland on 12/1/2022. We will be in Basel for 2 nights, visiting their city and Christmas markets. We will board our river cruise on 12/3/2022 and this is our itinerary:
12/3/2022 Embark Avalon Imagery II in Basel, Switzerland.
12/4/2022 Breisach, Germany (Black Forest with Cuckoo Clock workshop)
12/5/2022 Strasbourg, France (visit LaPetite France district and excursion into Alsace Countryside with wine tasting)
12/6/2022 Speyer, Germany (excursion to Heidelberg, Germany, visit Heidelberg Castle)
12/7/2022 Frankfurt, Germany (excursion to Rudesheim, Germany
12/8/2022 Main River Village (Wertheim guided walk and tasting)
12/9/2022 Wurzburg, Germany (Wonders of Wurzburg and Rothen urg, Jewel of the Middle Ages)
12/10/2022 Bamberg, Germany (Wonders of Bamberg)
12/11/2022 Nuremberg, Germany (Splendors of Nuremberg)
12/12/2022 Fly home from Nuremburg, Germany
December 11, 2022: This is our last stop for the Christmas markets. We are in Nuremberg, Germany. When we got up this morning and opened the curtains, we saw SNOW!
This morning we had a choice of included tours visiting the Nazi Rally Grounds or a panoramic drive, with a short walking tour, ending at the Christmas market. We have been to Nuremberg before, and toured the Nazi sights, so we opted for the tour ending at the Christmas markets.
On our drive, the guide noted more than 75% of Nuremburg was destroyed in WWII by allied bombing. In the following 20 years or so, much of the old city is rebuilt.
Nuremburg was first mentioned in 1050, although a fortress had been started about 50 years earlier. We visited the castle grounds and saw the first tower built.
The castle is considered one of Europes most formidable medieval fortifications.
On one of the castle terraces was an overlook, giving us a view of the city as well as one half-timbered house that survived the bombing.
Napoleon had this deep well dug and it still supplies fresh water.
Napoleon also established using one currency for Germany. Previously each little German state had their own currency, and there were many.
A 13th century city gate with a large tower. Our guide pointed out this area as they were protesting the World Cup.
The city of Nuremburg packed up all their treasures and stored them in this bunker during the war. Supposedly George Clooney made a reference to this bunker in the movie The Monuments Men.
We did not enter any buildings or churches on our walk, but we walked past St. Sebaldus Church, a medieval church. Established in 1225, it is named after an 8th century hermit and missionary. St. Sebaldus is the patron Saint of Nuremberg. It has been a Lutheran Church since the Reformation. In 1525, the city accepted the teachings of Martin Luther and became Protestant. Today, Nuremburg is about 1/3 Protestant, 1/3 Catholic, and 1/3 other religions or agnostic.
The beginning of the Christmas market! Remember, we are here on a Sunday morning about 10:15 am (one of the reasons I didn’t feel comfortable entering any of the churches, although none of them that we saw had the appearance of a service going on. Our guide told us the Nuremburg Christmas market does not have any music playing. Occasionally, a school or church group will come and sing a few carols.
We entered the market right by the “Schoner Brunnen” which is a 14th century fountain. It was built in 1385, about 62 feet high, and very attractive.
At the other end of the plaza was The Church of Our Lady. It was built between 1352 and 1362. I thought it was a glockenspiel, but could not get a clear answer. I think maybe the figures below the clock are out all the time.
Couple more pictures of the Christmas market.
We got a Nuremburg sausage sandwich. It is 3 smaller sausages on a bun, with mustard. We were warned that putting ketchup on them was a no-no. And, of course we got our gluhwein.
We had the option of coming back to the boat, having lunch, and going back out to the Christmas market. But, we felt we saw what we wanted to see, and we got our gluhwein, so we went back to the boat for lunch, and spent the afternoon packing and resting up.
This will be my last post for our Christmas Market cruise, or “gluhwein journey tasting trip”. We will get up very early Monday morning (will still be Sunday in Englewood), and start our long journey home. If all goes as planned, we will fly from Nuremberg to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Chicago (!), and Chicago to Tampa, then drive 100 miles to Englewood.
December 10, 2022: We had a restful morning. We have found it is hard to get up, eat breakfast and be ready for a tour by 8:30am or even 9:00am every morning. We are happy that Avalon gave us two morning this cruise where we could sleep a little longer. We bought pastries – a chocolate covered doughnut and an Apple strudel pastry in Rothenburg- so we didn’t even have to go to the restaurant for breakfast this morning! There is a lounge with a coffee machine (great machine, makes regular coffee, decaf, cappuccino, decaf cappuccino, latte macchiato, hot water, hot milk , and hot chocolate). The coffee is really good. Must be like a Keurig, but I just have to push a button for what I want and out comes the beverage! So I got my coffee and we had our pastries in our room. We like our room…it is bigger than other river cruises we have been on at 200 sq.ft. This summer, on Viking, our room was 150 sq. ft., and it felt really small. We don’t have a balcony, but one full wall of windows with a door that slides open. Our room has a beautiful live orchid in bloom 😁. Haven’t seen that before!
We were supposed to have a talk on Christmas traditions at 10:00am, and so we were in the lounge by 10:00, only to find out that we were slow going through a lock or something, so the talk would be at 11:00 (we could have slept an extra hour!). As we sat sat in the lounge waiting for the presentation, it started to snow! This is the first snow we have seen in years!
The talk was very interesting and some of the information was surprising. These are some details the speaker shared – don’t know if they’re true or not. For example, Santa’s suit did not become red and white until his image was picked up by Coke in the 1930’s as part of an advertising campaign. Also, the legend behind the pickle ornament was actually started in the states by Woolworth. Woolworth had imported a bunch of glass ornaments of all kinds of fruit. All the fruit ornaments sold except the pickle. So Woolworth marketing started the legend about the pickle ornament being hidden on Christmas trees in Germany. Then tourists came to Germany looking for pickle ornaments, and the Germans didn’t know why they were in such demand by the tourists. However, as any true merchant, they started making pickle ornaments! The beautiful woman with blond hair and a white dress that we frequently see was started by Hitler because he wanted to take religion out of the holiday.
This afternoon, we were in Bamberg. Bamberg is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We were very disappointed in our guide. Upon arriving in Bamberg, we had a walking tour. Bamberg is known for it’s nativity scenes, and supposedly there are 34 nativity scenes. The guide said she was first taking us to the most beautiful nativity scene at St Stephens, a Protestant church. When we walked in, there were children performing on musical instruments – one at a time. But we felt like we were intruding. The guide said it was a baptism…maybe, but I think it was more like a childrens recital. The first child we heard was playing a violin (Mary had a little lamb, I think). Next was a little boy playing an accordion. It was not formal at all, and the children went up, one at a time, to play their piece. The children were precious. The nativity was OK, but certainly not the most beautiful I’d ever seen. I think the connection was a special artist had made the figures in the nativity.
Our guide proceeded to tell us her interpretation of the nativity, and actually religion: Mary represented the earth and Joseph represented God and all of creation. She went on and on…I tuned her out. Obviously, not my view of religion, and inappropriate for a guide.
Then she took us to the “Upper Parish” church, or Parish Church of Our Lady.
Apparently, they move the figurines around as Christmas approaches, and today the scene represented Mary and Joseph looking for a place to stay. The whole plateau represented a full scene with some ladies working on linens and men sitting around and a beggar, etc. I thought this nativity was much better than the first.
The third church we went to was the Bamberg Cathedral.
Our guide showed us the Cathedral rose garden and what she called the residence area which was a large courtyard. When we entered the cathedral, an orchestra was playing and a soloist was singing. Apparently the bishop is leaving and the music was a rehearsal for the bishops good bye service which will be held tomorrow. This was a huge Church, and contained the tombs of an emperor and a pope. This church also had a nativity set up.
Interestingly, all the nativity scenes were indoors, where ours in the states are outdoors. These all had small figurines, where the ones in the states usually have life size figures and sometimes real people.
After the churches, she finally led us to the Christmas market. Being a Saturday, and apparently a college town, it was packed. So much so that it was hard to walk. The did have cute booths and a merry-go-round for the kids. We literally were squeezing our way through the crowds of people – something Dave and I hate. We did find a place to get our gluhwein and we asked for their mugs. The lady told us they were in very short supply because all the tourists want them and don’t turn them back in (guilty!). We told her that’s why we wanted them and she sold us our 2 mugs of gluhwein in the red mugs! We did not see anyone else with red mugs! The other mugs, blue ones and clear ones, just say gluhwein and maybe “Christmas market” in German. Ours also have “Bamberger” imprinted on them so we will remember where we got them. We had enough time so we got a refill before we left.
As we were leaving and walking toward our bus, we saw this hotel from 1380!
December 9, 2022: This trip has been much better than what I was expecting. It has been COLD, but we have pretty much prepared and endured the cold…low to mid 30’s. I have really enjoyed going to all the Christmas markets. We buy little to nothing, because we have so much stuff. Maybe I should say we have been on the Gluhwein tour. 😂😂😂
We have two tours today, so it has been a very long day. I am skipping trivia in the boat lounge in order to write my blog, and I’m more than OK with that because I am a bit tired, and I have a nice glass of wine.
Our morning tour was at 8:30am, and we are In Wurzburg. From our stateroom, we could see a huge church up on the hill, and a fortress – but we did not go to either of them.
The big attraction, and where we are going is the baroque Bishop’s Residenz, the home to the largest known ceiling fresco.
Unfortunately, photos are not allowed inside. We had to wear masks, but the funny thing is the mask mandate ends tomorrow. Our guide said they opened early specially for our tours (and a couple other companies we saw). The normal opening time was 10:00 and we were there at 9:00. Obviously, much less crowded for us to be able to enjoy this UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built between 1720 and 1744, and the interiors were completed in 1780. Unfortunately, it suffered much destruction from the bombing in WWII, but the main entry and fresco were not destroyed. Our guide told us there are some apartments today in the complex, used primarily by employees. She added that it is very difficult to heat these old apartments, which seems true by the temperatures inside that we are experiencing. After entering the Residenz, the huge ceiling fresco represents the four continents known at the time: Europe, Africa, Asia and Americas. It was painted by an Italian painter in the late 1700’s. Looking closely, it is obvious the Italian painter was not familiar with the continents other than Europe as he drew an ostrich with oversized human looking legs, an elephant’s trunk looked more like a vacuum cleaner, and people riding on alligators and crocodiles in the new world. The Residenz was called the largest parsonage in Europe by Napoleon. It is pretty phenomenal, and as you walk inside, you wonder how people could have occupied such a huge space. We walked through a few rooms, and they contained some of the original furniture. As I look at these rooms, with huge ceilings, it seems one of these opulent rooms could contain my whole house! Other than one up-man-ship, why in the world did they build these huge castles? Interesting to see, but the practical side of me comes out these days. Don’t be mislead, I could deal with the marble and silk fabrics….
After leaving the Residenz, we walked to the main plaza and the Christmas market. It is similar to the other Christmas markets, but one difference was they had a little Ferris wheel for tots. We saw a couple of little boys riding.
The merry-go-round had a carriage and vehicles in addition to the usual horses.
We peeked inside one of the churches, which was from the 13th Century, I believe.
Our boat is docked near what is called the old bridge.
We did get our gluhwein at the Wurzburg Christmas market 😀.
After lunch, we were on an optional tour to Rothenburg, Jewel of the Middle Ages. I believe our guide told us this whole city is a UNESCO Worle Heritage site. It is a medieval city surrounded with a wall and five medieval gates.
There were lots of cobblestones, red roofed buildings, half-timbered homes and the home of Kathe Wohlfahrt. If you are not familiar with Kathe Wohlfahrt, I will just say the stores are very well known for their Christmas decorations. Since Rothenburg was the first store, now there are five in Rothenburg, but there have also been stores in every city we have visited so far. Avalon have even given us a 3% discount coupon (whoopee!). Kathe Wohlfahrt even has a Christmas museum we did not go even though Avalon gave us a free entry coupon).
Our guide gives us a brief overview of the town, took us to an amazing overlook, and then we had about 2 hours of free time.
This is not much free time for Dave and me! We had certain things that we have been looking for, and Dave is quite the shopper! Nothing new, he always has been. We saw things at Kathe Wohlfahrt in Basel that we did not want to haul around our whole trip, so now that we are close to the end of our trip, we are looking for them more seriously!
Unfortunately , we did not have enough time to walk on the city wall. We walked to one of the city gates and saw an interesting face.
Apparently the watchmen would pour hot oil on unwelcome visitors through the openings in this face.
We stopped at an overlook for a beautiful view, with a little chapel.
Walking back into town, we saw a museum for criminals. This cage like apparatus was used for bakers who baked bread too light. For each 1/2 ounce missing in the bread’s weight, the cage and the baker were dipped into the water. Other craftsmen who did not carry out their business correctly were subjected to the same dunking.
The town is just so cute and decorated for Christmas. Obviously, Germans take Christmas very seriously.
Rothenburg has a glockenspiel, but it is very “subdued” At the top of each hour, the windows open to reveal two characters….and that’s it.
We got out gluhwein, but that was a unique experience (and I forgot to get a photo). We bought our gluhwein, but it was served in cups from a prior year. To get a current year cup, we had to trade the old cups in for a new cup after we drank the wine. We played the game, we got our Rothenburg 2022 mugs, but too complicated to get a picture this time.
I was also on a mission to find some apple strudel, and to try these pastry things we’ve seen around Germany that look like baseballs. Fortunately, in Rothenburg we found some “mini” baseball things, but I haven’t tried mine yet. It looks like strips of pie crust wound into a ball shape like a ball of yarn. I’ll let you know when I eat it….tune in tomorrow!
We stayed in Rothenburg until after dark, and took a couple of pictures. It is just beautiful and I love these Christmas markets.
We got back to the ship shortly before dinner time. After dinner, they were having a Christmas trivia contest. Dave and I decided to pass on the trivia.
December 8, 2022: Today was pretty low key. We sailed along the Main (pronounced Mine) river this morning. There was a cookie baking demonstration which we did not attend. We were happy to get a little extra rest this morning. The boat docked in Wertheim and we had a walking tour that was included. The Christmas Markets were not open today, as it is a small town and the Christmas markets are only in operation on the weekends. I believe the guide said there are 6,500 inhabitants in the town proper and 24,000 in the surrounding area. There is a castle high up on the top of a hill, but it is just the ruins.
We did not walk up to the castle. It was built in the 1100’s and only occupied about two centuries. Wertheim is at the confluence of two rivers, the Main and the Tauber.
This was the city gate we entered through. Not sure if the red truck was for the Christmas markets or not. The city gate looks short because the city has had a lot of trouble with flooding. The rivers flood twice in Spring and twice in Fall. I believe the guide said the ground had been filled in about 6 feet, but it has only helped some with the flooding.
This leaning tower was built as a watch tower. After being built, it started to lean, so they added to the top to try to counteract the leaning. It has served May purposes over the years including a gathering place for women, a student prison, and more recently it’s been used for wine tastings. Our guide said this area produces mostly red wine, which is different from all the other regions we’ve been visiting that mostly produce Riesling.
Many houses have markings on the door frames showing the depth of the water and the year of the folding. This is the first one the guide showed us. The markings are a little hard to make out, but they’re on the left door frame. I think the highest mark at the top is from 1882.
This was another building with the flood markings, close to the Tauber River on the right side of the picture. The top shows a flood of about 28 feet in 1784.
This is a pretty small town, and this picture is a street scene.
During world war II, the town encouraged its Jewish population to leave the country. All the Jews except 18 left. Those 18 were taken to concentration camps and died. The current owner of this house honored those Jews by decorating his facade with 18 stars. A mother and her children who lived in this house were among the Jews that died.
This is a 13th generation baker who gave us a sample of pretzels he made, he said they were “the best pretzels we’ve ever tasted!”. They were good.
Our guide showed us the smallest house in Wertheim. It is more narrow at the bottom than at the top because he was taxed on the size at the bottom.
We visited the Collegiate church of Wertheim which started out as a Catholic Church in the 1300’s. Martin Luther came to town and converted the prince that lived in Wertheim, and the church is now a Lutheran church. Because it’s beginnings were Catholic, Christ is shown on the cross.
The ceilings above the Chancel were decorated.
Fountain on the Main Street.
Oldest hotel in town, The Golden Eagle, which seemed to also be a restaurant.
The gate tower lit up for Christmas.
We got the most expensive cups of gluhwein, and I didn’t even take a picture. We walked around trying to find a vendor with the fancy cups each town seems to have (I’m collecting them much to Daves chagrin). We finally spotted a place, but had to go into the adjoining restaurant to get served. It was quite a process as the waitress took the cups back in the kitchen I presume to heat them up. Finally, she came back, but only charged us for the wine. I told her we wanted the cups, and a gentleman, whom I presume was the proprietor, said they didn’t sell them. I asked if we could please buy the two we had, and he charged us 20 euros for the gluhwein and cups….this is about 6 euros more than we paid anywhere else, but I got the cups!
The entertainment tonight was a woman and 2 men. They played and sang some very upbeat music…Satisfaction, YMCA, Dancing Queen…etc. I thought they did a good job and we danced a little. One interesting tidbit – they got on the boat as we went through one set of locks and got off at another set of locks!
December 7, 2022: Today we were in Rudesheim. It is a small city in Germany, but Dave said it’s Christmas Market ranked #2 of all the Christmas markets.
We took a bus from out port near Frankfurt to Rudesheim. We were told we were going to take a chop cho train the short distance into town, but it was actually a truck line engine pulling about 6 cars.
We had an included tour this morning, to Siegfried’s Mechanical Musical Instrument Museum. It is advertised as 350 self- playing mechanical music instruments spanning 3 centuries. It was more interesting than I anticipated. The machines play many instruments automatically, and most of them would have replaced orchestras in theaters or dance halls. Many of them played music from pin holes on a roll, but others used things like pins in a drum and wax cylinders. The smallest one was like a little music box, and the proprietors are the only ones making them today. They were sold in the gift shop starting at 1,950 euros. No, we did not buy any. These are some of the mechanical instruments we heard.
We had a short time to visit the markets before our included lunch, so we wandered around a bit. The markets sold mostly food and gluhwein, but a few handicrafts and ornaments. We met up for lunch with our group. The restaurant had a band playing all kinds of music – from Christmas Caroles to Jimmy Buffett .
The lunch was potato soup, pork, mashed potatoes, creamed cabbage and apple strudel. We cut out before the Apple strudel so we could more of the Christmas markets.
Here are some views of the Christmas markets in Rudesheim:
We saw a pen with some cute animals.
The gluhwein place where we stopped had red and white gluhwine, and two colors of cups. We tried the white gluhwein, but decided we liked the red better. So, now we know!
We left Rudesheim about 2:00PM, and we were back to the boat about 3:30PM. We felt we could have easily spent another hour (or more), as the boat does not sail until 5:45pm. Don’t know why Avalon could not have given us a little more time in Rudesheim.
Rudesheim is really a neat little town, about 1 hour away from Frankfurt. There are lots of shops and restaurants, and was a very active place when we had dinner here on our river cruise last July.
It is really weird, but Daves iphone and my iPad think we are in Thailand! We had to reset our date and time off “automatic” and designated “Berlin” so we’d have the correct date and time! My iphone seems to be picking up the location correctly.
December 6, 2022: Last night, our cruise director told us the legend of Sinta Claus. We were to leave our shoes outside our door with notes indicating what we were sorry for, and a wish for the future. This morning, we had a bag of cookies and candies in our shoes. It was a nice nod to an European tradition.
We are docked just outside of Speyer, which we visited in July. Speyer has a phenomenal aeronautical museum, which we have not been able to visit, Maybe a future visit to Germany.
Today we have an all day tour to Heidelberg. It is about an hour on the bus from Speyer to Heidelberg. Our first stop is the Heidelberg Castle. Our guide was fixated on Prince Frederick and Elizabeth Stuart of London (Frederick and Elizabeth). So she spoke a lot about them.
While the castle is almost as old as the city, parts of the castle were constructed around 1300. It wasn’t until Prince Ruprecht III (1398 – 1410) that the castle was used as a regal residence. There are lots of different buildings, each of which represents a different period of German architecture. In 1764, the castle was hit by lightening leaving it uninhabitable. The citizens of Heidelberg used the castle stones to build or repair their houses.
In 1613, Prince Friedrich married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James I. This was a big win for Protestantism, but while it was a political marriage, it grew into a marriage of love. Frederick and Elizabeth were only 16 years old. While on London, Frederick saw the extravagance of the English crown. Because he loved Elizabeth, he wanted to give her in Germany as much as she left in England. On her 19th. Birthday, he gave her the Elizabethan Gate. Supposedly it was constructed overnight. It was plain on one side, but elaborately decorated on the other. He also built an English building for her and an English garden. They had 13 children and Frederick died young, at 36 years of age. Our guide said the 13th child almost became queen of England, and the current monarchy traces its roots from this 13th child of Frederick and Elizabeth.
We did not visit rooms inside the castle, but we saw the largest wine barrel in the world. It was built in 1751 by Prince Karl Theodor and holds 220,000 liters or 58,124 gallons of wine, there is a dance floor built on top of the wine barrel. The court jester who guarded the cask during the reign of Prince Elector Carl Philip, a Tyrolean dwarf nick-named Perkeo, was supposedly known for his ability to drink large quantities of wine. Legend has it that he died when he mistakenly drank a glass of water.
On the terrace of the castle is the indentation of a foot. If you put your shoe in it, it means you will return to Heidelberg.
We had some great views of Heidelberg from the terrace.
After the castle we got a brief tour of the town, and then left to explore on our own. Avalon had given us a voucher for a free glass of gluhwein, but the line was so long, we decided to explore first and come back later for our gluhwein. First, we went to Kathe Wohlfahrt’s store, which is a famous German store selling Christmas, and other items. Some really cute things….they also have a store in Nuremberg, so we are going to wait until then to make any purchases.
We walked to Vetters, a restaurant which brews their own beer, and supposedly has the most alcoholic beer in the world.
Our guide suggested we get a flight of beers, which is what we did. There were 4 beers on the flight. The first one was a lager, and it was very pale. The second one was a wheat beer, which was pretty good, and had a more yellow color. The third beer was their Christmas beer, and Dave and I both liked this one the best. We did not recognize any spices, it was just a good, mild flavored beer. The fourth one was their Vetters 33, which was their strongest beer. It had a very sweet flavor, and I thought it was heavy with a molasses flavor.. I like dark beers, but the molasses turned me off. So after we drank our flight of beers, Dave and I both ordered a glass of the Christmas beer. For lunch, I had sausages which came with a pretzel and mustard. I thought it was very good. Dave had pork snitzel which came with roasted potatoes and a salad. We asked if we could substitute sauerkraut for the salad, which they did. Of course, Dave didn’t want the sauerkraut, but I did, and it was good.
After lunch, we walked back and got our free gluhwein. This was in the last Christmas market in Heidelberg. There were four Christmas markets that we saw in Heidelberg. Who knows, there may have been more. Most of the markets focused on food and drink. We visited all four as we walked back to our bus. We actually had about 3 hours of free time, but that goes very quick when you are walking through the markets.
After the last market, there was a store selling all kinds of sweets and breads. Dave and I bought some cookies and chocolates. We really are not in the market to buy much, but we enjoy looking.
Back on the ship, we had a farewell toast to those leaving our cruise, and a gala dinner. The food is very good.
December 5, 2022: This morning Avalon offered an included tour to Strasbourg. When we read through the description, it was the same tour we did in July. So we decided to sleep in.
After lunch, we had an optional tour “Into the Alsace Countryside with Wine Tasting”. First we visited a small town, Barr, France and the “Lepp Leininger” winery. This location has been producing wine since 1760, as the Lepp winery. In 1911, the Leininger family bought the winery and has been producing wines since 1911. Our guide at the winery was the grandson. He was very good describing the process. They only use their own grapes for their wines and primarily produce white wine. They do make a Pinot Noir, as the only red wine. They started producing natural wines when COVID hit, and that part of their market is growing. They produce 60,000 bottles a year.
We were given 4 wines to taste. The first was a natural wine, called “Prologue” produced in 2021. It was a dry wine, but very mild. The second wine was a Riesling produced in 2020, which was dry, but good. The third wine was a Pinot Gris produced in 2020. It was good but tasted much sweeter than the previous wines. The fourth wine was a Gewurztraminer, produced in 2018. This wine was very sweet and would be what Dave would call a dessert wine.
The town was very cute, but small. I think he told us the population was about 8500.
Leaving Barr, we drove to Obernai, France. This is another very cute medieval town with town walls from the 13th century. It is a picturesque town with half-timbered homes, 20 towers and 4 gates. Obernai has a small Christmas market, too, mostly with food and drink. Our guide gave us a short tour, pointing out the 13th century walls and towers, the Jewish synagogue, the tower that is left from the 13th century church, the new church, and the “Six Buckets Well”. A fountain in the center of town has a girl statue at the top, Sainte-Odile (662-720). She is the patron Saint of Alsace, France. She was born blind, but gained her sight when she was baptized at the age of 13. Our guide said the gluhwein would be white since most of the wine in France is white. However, when we walked through the market, we only saw red gluhwein. We were given a sample of gingerbread, which had a very strong ginger taste. Dave found a chocolate shop and was able to get himself some chocolate.
After returning to the ship, and after dinner, we had a bit of entertainment on the ship. We were all suppose to fill out a form indicating which of 10 songs would result in the most people dancing. I had #1 and #2 right, but blew it on #3. Who would have thought “The Chicken Dance” would draw the 3rd most dancers? Anyway, it was a lot of fun and drew a lot of laughs.
December 4, 2022: This morning we opted out of the full day trip to the Black Forest because we were just there in July. Instead, we did a wine tasting. Our guide was a wine maker. He talked a lot about the different soils, and much of the land has volcanic rocks and ash from eons ago. He took us to a wine museum, the Kaiserstuhl Wine Museum, as this is a big wine region.
The museum belonged to a Church from 1315 to 1806. The area farmers brought their tithe to this building, which was one tenth of their crop. According to our guide, the people revolted because they were tithing 1/10 of their crops, but they were starving.
We tasted 4 wines, 3 white and 1 red. I did not like any of the white wines, although our guide said the 3rd white one was one of his wines, and it had won awards. The third one was the best of the 3, but still not something I would choose. The fourth wine was a red one, which he said was a Pinot Noir. Dave and I both liked this one, and Dave bought a bottle.
We went back to the boat and had lunch. It was raining and we were debating going out in the rain. Finally we decided we’d brave the rain and we walked into Breisach. The boat is docked right outside of town, so it is a short walk.
There is a huge church up on one of the hills, so we decided to walk up to the church (ugh! Lots of stairs!).
There were lots of placards with descriptions of the church, town hall, and several of the houses. The town was originally a Roman town, and was mentioned several times on ancient maps as a stopover point. One prominent guest was Roman Emperor Valentinian who visited on August 30, 369. The date is recorded because he signed a law while in Breisach. Not sure what happened between 369 and 1200, but there are lots of buildings with written history from the 1200’s on.
After climbing to the top of the hill, first we visited St. Stephan’s Minster, or the church. It was built between the 12th and 15th centuries, but then almost completely destroyed during WWII in 1945. Actually, many of the buildings were destroyed in WWII, and then rebuilt after the war.
There was an interesting sculpture of a bull coming up out of the ground with a female warrior (Joan of Arc?) riding the bull. Did not see what this sculpture actually represented.
We had good views from the plateau where the church is located. We could see in the distance another hill with a fortress of some sort, but did not go there, as we would have had to walk down the present hill and climb up the hill where the fortress was located.
Once on top of the hill where St. Stephan’s was located, there was actually an “upper town” where in centuries past the villagers lived. So we could wander around. Several of the houses had plaques which told who lived there. One funny thing was the information was in German, French and English. The German and French descriptions were several sentences long, but the English translation was shortened to one or two sentences.
One house belonged to a Catholic theologian, can’t remember where he was from, but was forced into retirement and moved to Breisach in the late 1930’s. He was imprisoned many times for speaking out against nazism, and subsequently put to death in a concentration camp. His house caught my eye because it reminded me that it was not only Jews that died in concentration camps.
Another plaque told how Christians and Jews lived together in the 1300’s. But when the plague came, the Jews were accused of poisoning the wells thus causing the plague, and the Jews were murdered.
We came across another tower which provided water to the ancient town, using a water wheel.
We spotted the Christmas Market in the lower part of town and walked down to check it out. We agreed that it is a cute town and we were glad we braved the rain.
One of the streets leading to the Christmas Market.
The Breisach Christmas Market was much, much smaller than the Christmas Markets in Basel, but had its own atmosphere. According to our cruise director, the original European Christmas Markets were all about food and drink. But when tourists started coming, they added the booths with handicrafts and other items for sale. The Christmas Market in Breisach was mostly food and drink, but they also had a curling court (is curling done in a court? That’s what I’m calling it!) set up and were curling! Dave and I got a gluhwein and watched! We wished we knew the rules, because it seemed a little different than the curling we watch in the Olympics. We did not keep our gluhwein cup…it was just a plain glass cup whereas the Basel ones have the year imprinted on them.
After the gluhwein and curling, we’d had enough rain and headed back to the boat. It was “tea time” and they were serving more gluhwein!
We had some evening entertainment – a lady singer and gentleman piano player. We enjoyed the performance. She sang songs from Caberet, West Side Story and some Christmas Caroles.
December 3, 2022:
Today was a “slow” day. We checked out of our hotel and took a cab to the river oar, Avalon Imagery II. The good news is that we are much happier with our stateroom on Avalon than we were with our stateroom on Viking last summer. Admittedly, we booked a higher level stateroom on this trip, but we just feel that the layout of the boat is much better than Viking.
We did not sign up for the “optional” Basel tour, since we had already spent 2 days in Basel. From others we have met onboard, they went to two of the Christmas markets in Basel that we already visited….so it was a good decision. We stayed onboard and had what they referred to as a light lunch, but I thought it was pretty filling. It was served buffet style, and they had sandwiches, vegetarian lasagne and beef lasagne. Also soup, various salads and some small dessert cakes. Plenty to eat! There are also cookie, coffee and tea stations all over the ship.
This afternoon, we took a little walk along the stream into whatever town was close to where the boat was docked. We are near the 3 country area of Switzerland, Germany and France. Our walk was still in Switzerland. The big sights were the water fowl.
We walked a little over 2 miles, and then we were back on the boat.
Shortly after 4:30 PM, the boat was moving. We had a safety briefing, met the officers, and had a toast. So, we are off on the Christmas Market cruise!
December 2, 2022: since we went about 33 hours without a good sleep, we did not get an early start. Due to some text notifications on my phone, we were awakened at 8:00am Basil time. We did not jump out of bed and get going then, but just kind of relaxed for awhile, watching the news, showering, etc. By the time we were really ready, it was almost lunchtime, so we headed out looking for lunch! We walked across the river and along the riverbank. We saw the “Middle bridge”.
The area along the riverbank had some interesting houses. One had a snail plaque on the outside. It is the red snail house and supposedly was the smallest house in Basel. The legend is that the inhabitants should furnish the living room in the red snail.
Across from the area Snail House is this fountain. It is a Baselisk fountain, and it has a bowl at the bottom so dogs can get a drink, too.
We kept walking and saw a bunch of food trucks ready for the evening rush. One place mentioned to us was Klara. It was described as a food court, like in a mall. We did find it, and cruised through. They had Asian, Italian, African, ane even burgers, but it did not look appealing to us. We found a restaurant that looked nice to us and ended up having an European pizza which we shared. I say European because it reminded us of the ones we had in Italy. Very thin, crispy crust and we added ham and salami. It was very good. After lunch we wandered around some more. One source I saw said Basel had about 200,000 inhabitants. Maybe that does not include the college students? It seems bigger than that. After a brief rest in our hotel room, we headed out again. We walked to the area in front of our hotel. There are food trucks set up, and a pop up musical group singing. Some of the food trucks are selling market foods like vegetables, salamis, flowers, etc…things you’d take home. But we were on a mission to find another Christmas market Dave had read about. We saw a beautiful tree outside a church.
There was a Santa entertaining children by making massive bubbles.
After watching him and the children, we headed to a church in back of him…an Evangelical Reformed church.
We went inside, and they had some beautiful stained glass windows, and chandeliers with red lights. It was dark inside, though. But vents on the floor were giving off some nice heat!
Just outside the church was another market.
This one was much smaller than the one we visited last night, but it had a really cool area for kids. You had to buy a ticket, and then the kids could make candles, decorate cookies, do wood burning, visit a circus, ride a train, or cook something (bread?) over a fire. This market seemed to be more kid oriented. For kids,this was really a cool area.
We walked across the river to see what was going on there. We passed a bar that had keg handles at the table!
We started looking for someplace to have dinner, and we saw this really cool place. The tables were in ski lifts!
Unfortunately, they were all reserved, so we could not eat here ☹️.
We found an Italian restaurant and the maitre d’ said he could seat us but he had a reservation for the table in 90 minutes. Dave said, If you can serve us, we’ll be done in 90 minutes! So, we ate there. I had risotto with shrimp:
And Dave had Chicken Cordon Bleu:
Of course we had a bottle of wine, a Pinot Grigio, which we are beginning to like! The meal was very good.
At night, many of Basel streets are lit up with these lights overhead making it feel very festive.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and visited the terrace.
We were surprised to see the food trucks and musicians gone! This was taken about 8:00PM on a Friday night! Will be interesting if they are all back tomorrow, but we will be gone – on our river cruise.
We went to the restaurant in our hotel and got a couple of glasses of red wine, and they also gave us a bowl of nibbles to take back to the room.
Time to kick back and rest! It was a good day in Basel!
November 30 – December 1, 2022: I look at this as one long day. We left early for our flight out of Tampa, just because we were ready to go….it turned out to be a good thing. We were flying Tampa to Newark to Frankfurt to Basel, two stops, which we try to avoid. As we were walking into the airport, Dave noticed the two flights to Newark before our were delayed. We knew there was a storm in that general region, but thought it would pass through before our flight. When we went to check our bags, Dave told the United lady we were concerned our flight would be delayed causing a domino effect of missed flights for us. She agreed and put us on an earlier flight. It was still delayed, but should get us to Newark in time for our flight. Whew! We got to Newark about 90 minutes before our second leg, to Frankfurt, left. That was perfect as it was a long walk through the terminal, a pit stop, and boarding started! If we had taken our original flight, it did not arrive in Newark until 15 minutes before our Frankfurt flight, and we would have missed it. The rest of the trip to Basel was uneventful, but we did enjoy watching the sunrise over Frankfurt from the airplane.
The Basel airport is interesting as it sits in both France and Switzerland. When you go to exit, you can either exit into France or into Switzerland. Customs was very easy…you choose a line to declare items or a line with nothing to declare. We had nothing to declare, so we walked straight out to the taxi stand – did not have to talk to customs official at all.
We are staying at Hotel Marthof in Basel, which in right at the beginning of the old city.
We were able to check in when we arrived at 1:30pm, but rooms were not available until 3:00PM. Even though we had a couple of “naps” on our flight, we were still sleep deprived. Switzerland is 6 hours ahead of Englewood, so we have been up for 24 hours at this point. Dave was hungry, so we set out to explore and find some food. Conveniently, a McDonalds was very close to our hotel, so we got a burger to hold us over until dinner time. Sitting in a window seat eating our burger, we could see the city hall.
We walked over to the city hall and it had a huge, beautiful decorated tree.
Basel is all decorated for Christmas and it is a cute city. It is pretty cool – cold to us – and with all the decorations, it really feels like Christmas! There are many fountains and we actually saw kids playing in them, squirting water at each other. Don’t they know how cold it is!
We wandered a little more. We found one of the city gates which was part of the city wall at one time.
There are lots of little plazas, and we saw this tree with notes all over it. Two young girls came up and we asked them what the purpose of the tree was (first we asked if they spoke English! Of course they did – we Americans are spoiled in that so many of us only know one language!). The tree was a wishing tree. There were two stands with note papers, and anyone could write a wish and hang it on the tree. We didn’t write a wish then, but if we pass the tree again, I will definitely add a wish.
We walked by a building with a doorway and 3 long pull cords. I have to assume that each pull cord was the “doorbell” for each of the residences. Unique!
Since it was after 3:00pm, we walked back to the hotel, got our room key, and went to our room. Unfortunately, our view is of…construction! We scattered our belongings, searching for our heavier, warmer clothes, but trying not to totally disrupt all our carefully packed clothes – ha! (We are in this hotel for 2 nights before we move to the river cruise ship.) We dug out our bathroom items, found our heavier clothes, and headed out to find a Christmas Market. We wandered the old town some more, and every store is decorated and very “Christmassy”. Did a lot of window shopping! As we got close to the Christmas market, there was a museum/restaurant that has really cute window that reminded me of the windows in Marshall Field’s, downtown Chicago, from YEARS ago! At least one window was animated!
We could see the Christmas Market and walked towards it. There were tons of people! Lots and lots of little booths with vendors selling everything. The first place we stopped had a very long line to purchase “Gluh wine”, which tasted more like apple cider. But it was hot and delicious! The wine was 5 € and you pay an extra 3€ for the ceramic cup, which I think you can turn in and get your 3€ back, but we kept them as souvenirs. Since this was our first Christmas market, I know Dave is hoping we don’t return home with a suitcase fill of Gluh wine cups! We wandered around the market and saw all kinds of decorations, including this huge one! Should remind you of the small merry-go-rounds that
you lighted candles to make them turn.
We decided to walk back to the hotel and find a restaurant. We ended up eating at the restaurant in our hotel “Bohemia”. I had “Moules and Frites” and Dave had Salmon, with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. It was very good and was a relaxing way to finish our day.