From Rüdesheim to Basel

As you may see from the posting date, we have already been back from the cruise for two days, so we thought we'd get the last few days of the cruise blog posted before Monica gets into her Christmas baking. We had a very early start on disembarkation day, 3:00 a.m. for a 6:00 flight from Basel to Amsterdam, and were way too tired to try to write a post during our layover at Schipol Airport.

There was even a Crystal Society party evening, although according to Monia (no, that's not a spelling error, that's her name!) there were 55 'newbies' and 50 repeat cruisers on board, so everybody was invited. And it turned out that we had the highest number of Crystal cruises for our sailing. Monia gave us a lovely bouquet of flowers which graced our suite for the rest of the cruise.

That evening after the party, we attended a special dinner, and since we have been quite lax about posting food pictures for this cruise, we'll make up for it here:

Foie Gras

Lemon Sole

Surf & Turf - a slice of beef tenderloin and a lobster tail

Traditional German cookies and a chocolate strawberry

Our next stop was Speyer, where we elected to take the excursion to Heidelberg. It turned out to be a nice day, although a little cold, and once we got to Heidelberg we saw that they had had a dusting of snow overnight. Apparently, they'd had a wicked thunderstorm before the snow (?!!), which made the trees and the hills across the river from the castle that much more frosted and beautiful.

Down by the Neckar River

We had been to Heidelberg Castle before, and it was nice to see it in a different setting with the huge Christmas tree in the courtyard.

The Elizabeth Tower

The tree in the castle courtyard

Overlooking the river. The frost was still thick on the
trees in the hills beyond.

Christmas card shot??

Our free time in town was supposed to include a visit to another Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas store, but it was so crowded that we decided to look around in the markets instead. Heidelberg has three Christmas markets in the old town, each with a little different theme. One had some rides for the children and a skating rink, another had more food than anything else, and a third had more of the craft stalls. Of course, there was always food and Glühwein available. Our lunch that day consisted of sausages on baguettes and Glühwein. Yummy!!

Lots of people were falling down. You can tell they don't
get much chance to skate.

We took Sunday off in Strasbourg, as the weather reports had been saying there would be snow changing to rain during the day, and nobody likes to walk around a market in the rain. Our fellow guests who had taken the shuttle into town said it was quite nice while the snow was falling (although the market wasn't open yet), but then it turned to sleet and rain and became slippery and windy. The phrase "We're soaked." was heard from many a person returning to the ship! Not the best day to be outdoors, so we caught up on the blog and had an 'in-port sea day'.

The next day, Monday, we landed in Breisach, or rather quite a ways outside of Breisach, near a very small town in France called Schönau. This part of the Upper Rhine is a real mixture of French and German as the river is the border between the two countries from just south of Karlsruhe until it reaches Basel. Then it becomes the border between Germany and Switzerland, ending in Lake Constance where its two mountain sources come together.

After a quick crossing of the river back into Germany, we headed toward Freiburg, the capital of the Black Forest area. Unfortunately, the weather from Strasbourg had followed us, and it was a mostly rainy day. The Freiburg market looked very nice, but it was no fun dodging umbrellas and avoiding wind gusts. Instead we found a Glühwein stand in a sheltered alleyway and warmed up, then we went back to the Münster, which looks like the cathedral in the town square. We finally found out what the difference is - a Dom, in German-speaking countries, is the home church of a bishop; if there's no bishop in that town or city, the main church can only be called a Münster.

As you can see by the pictures, a lot of people seemed to be taking refuge from the weather in the Münster, but it was worth taking some time over anyways.

Our entertainment host on board (aka piano player/singer), David, a fellow Canuck from Sault Ste. Marie, who lives in Parry Sound when on land, did a great job every evening in Palm Court. On Monday evening he hosted 'Name That Tune'...Monica really shouldn't have been allowed to participate since she's so good at this...Our team ended up in a tie with the other Canadians from the Toronto area, a group of older folks travelling together. The tie-breaker: somebody had to go up and sing a song with David! Well, that puts a lot of people off, but our team sent Monica out to do the job. And she got quite the applause at the end, even though the song was 'New York, New York', one that she really doesn't like that much. Our prize - a box of Mozartkugeln,  Austrian chocolates with marzipan centres and hazelnut cream.

Tuesday we arrived in Basel, after what the captain later called quite a night for the crew. The rain of the previous couple of days, which extended through most of the Rhine's Upper Valley, caused the water level in the river to rise unexpectedly by about a metre, or 3 feet. As a result, the crew had to scramble around on the Vista Deck to lower the outside bar (that would have been interesting to see) and the shade canopies and put down all the railings so the Bach would be able to get into one of the locks.  He apologized that evening for the crew waking anyone up as they worked over our heads at 4:00 in the morning. We actually didn't hear them, that's how comfy our bed was!!

Finally got the picture of  the ship! The top deck railings and
canopies fold down, and the pop-up bar lowers into
a space behind the Bistro when the ship needs a 'flat top'.

Rather than waiting for the shuttle bus and the 15 minute drive to the drop-off point, we took a 15 minute walk to the Christmas market near the Münster. We had a little more shopping to do, and we wanted to get it done before the market got busy and the weather got worse. The forecast was, again, for showers off and on during the day.

After our early shopping success, we checked out one of the food tents, where the proprietor was handing out free samples of potato pancakes. Great marketing tool - and the first time we'd seen it. After another stroll around the market and the Münster, we went back for our lunch, with the requisite Glühwein. Now we know why all the markets have it - nothing warms you up better on a blustery day! Coffee just wouldn't have done as well.

After lunch we headed on to the Barfüsserplatz and the other large market in town. This one had fewer food stalls, but a lot of crafts, Christmas decorations, soaps, jewelery, etc, etc., and they were jammed pretty close together. We thought all the decorations they put on the roofs were quite cute.

Market stalls

The singing moose (meese?), Moni (yup!) and Roni. They
can also sing in English with a German accent!

There's a whole village on top of those roofs!

The tree in front of the town hall.

We got back to the ship and got our packing done, as we had already planned an early night ahead of our 3:00 alarm in the morning. But, of course, the early night didn't quite materialize as planned. We were all having such a good time that even the captain joined in the entertainment. He brought out a guitar and played a couple of tunes for us. And even Monica had to go back to the microphone a couple of times.

The pastry chef was busy! These gingerbread houses and
people showed up toward the end of the cruise.

Captain Hans and his guitar

Two of our bartenders, Zoltan and Josip, holding their
namesake nutcrackers

David got guests up and dancing most nights.

David Williams, pride of Parry Sound! And you wonder
why he works on cruise ships??

Overall, a great trip! Of course one can only see Christmas Markets at Christmas time, but we'd love to do a warm weather cruise on one of these ships to take advantage of the outside deck and the suite window that lowers half way to become a variation on the French balcony.

We haven't shown much of the onboard food, but suffice it to say that this is the most regional specialty cuisine that we've seen of any of our previous river cruises. At the buffet lunch there was some local food included every day - even 4 kinds of sausages and sauerkraut one day - and dinners often had one local dish on the menu. And the servers working at the buffet never hesitated to give another suggestion to add to your plate!

The food, our suite, the public spaces and, of course, all of the staff, were just as we've come to expect from Crystal. Everyone we met on board, from the captain on down, had one goal in mind - to make this river cruise the best one we've ever taken, and they succeeded. Crystal certainly did its homework in designing these river ships, and we think the final product has turned out fantastic.

Oh, and our final count on Glühwein mugs: 5 different styles!

We're looking forward to seeing some of our fellow guests in 2019; there are two other couples who are, like us, booked on the full world cruise. We'll just have to see how we get through our next cruise - 39 days aboard Crystal Serenity from mid-February until the beginning of April. Until then, Happy Holidays to all our blog readers. Best wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2018!

The Rhine Valley to Rüdesheim

Fortunately, Saturday morning dawned bright and cloudless, if a little chilly, but what did we expect at this time of year? At least we would be able to see the castles high on the hills. A little mist might have come in handy at times for effect, but so far it was looking a lot nicer than it had the last time we came through the valley two years ago.

We spent much of the morning out on Vista Deck, where there were plenty of blankets out, hot coffee set up on the bar, and the bar staff ready to throw a little extra something into the coffee cup should you want it. We'll have to go back over our map to identify many of these towns and castles, but here are the photos:

The most famous section of the Rhine River is the Loreley, where the river bends around a high cliff. This has always been a very dangerous area for shipping because of the narrow river and the heavy current. Of course, this also means there is a story attached to it. It goes that Loreley was a beautiful mermaid with a sweet voice who sat up on the cliff singing and combing her hair. She was so distracting that sailors would forget their navigation and run into the rocks, capsizing their boats and often losing their lives. Eventually she lost heart because she couldn't charm every single man who saw her, and slipped back into the river, never to be seen or heard again. There is now a small monument to Loreley made by a German sculptress.

We arrived at Rüdesheim around mid-day. We had booked a tour of the town for the afternoon, that included a visit to the market and the Memorial to the Unification of Germany - the first one in the late 1800s that brought all of the independently governed provinces together to create the country.

There is an open cablecar that goes up to the memorial, and a number of people were asking if we would be taking that route or if we would be using the buses. As it turned out, one of the groups in the tour was designated to take the cablecar, and since we were already in that group, we stuck with it. It turned out to be a slightly longer tour as we had to walk from the ship at one end of town to the buses at the other end of town, and then halfway back again to the cablecar station. Then we spent quite a bit of time at the memorial while our guide, Manfred, explained in his rather witty way about the history of the area and the unification.

Does he look a little cold???

Look who else was riding the cablecar!

When we got back into town, we took a quick peek at the market as we headed toward one of the restaurants where we were to taste the official drink of town, Rüdesheimer Kaffee, coffee made with Asbach Uralt brandy, coffee, whipped cream and a sprinkle of chocolate shavings on top. That was delicious, but it didn't leave us with much time for the market afterward, as we also had an evening concert at Eberbach Monastery not long after dinner. The market was already looking very crowded at 4:30, given the six river cruisers in town, so we did a little shopping at the German Christmas store, Käthe Wohlfahrt, and walked back to the ship to prepare for dinner and the evening excursion.

Back in town before going for our coffee, Manfred took us to a hotel where they found a great use for leftover huge wine barrels - they turned a number of them into rooms! They are just big enough for a bathroom in the back and two beds, one on each side of the door. The story goes that people would originally take them when they only needed a place to lay their head after a long night of partying...now they are slightly more expensive than the regular hotel rooms, but they still include breakfast!!

A candy stall selling Lebkuchen Herzen,
decorated gingerbread hearts

It was the busiest market we had seen so far

We knew that Eberbach Monastery must be very, very old (meaning not heated), since the excursion description said 'wear a warm coat'. It was after 8:00 when we finally got there, and they had had a dusting of snow up in the hills. It was too bad we didn't get a couple of minutes to take a few photos outside as the monastery church was very beautifully lit up, but we didn't want to hold anything up since our bus was running late already, so we rushed inside.

They weren't kidding - it was quite chilly inside, enough that the lights for the performance were creating something of a fog inside, as you can see from the pictures. They were passing out plush Crystal cruises blankets for us to sit on, and more for over our laps.

Once we got settled, the string quartet, a group of ladies called La Finesse, came out and started their first piece. The excursion was described as a 'classical concert'; well, they were playing classical music to start, but modernized versions of the classics! Then they added a few more modern pieces that were written for strings, and ended up with a medley of classics that have been updated and used in movies and such. They reminded us a bit of the Trans Siberian Orchestra and their updated take on Beethoven.

We were still all rather chilly by the time we got back to the buses and then the ship, so there were quite a few people in the Palm Court for a drink, hot or cold, and "fortified", if you know what we mean!