Today was World War II history day as today we are visiting the sites of Nuremburg. Jody was particularly excited as she has been reading a lot about Hitler and the Holocaust, and we heve both been watching a lot of WW1 and WW2 documentaries lately. The included tour was a visit to old town Nuremburg, bu we were both looking forward to the optional tour to the Nazi Rally sites and the Nuremburg courtroom where the Nazis were charged with war crimes after WW2. We began our tour this morning by meeting our local tour guide who’s name we missed, but she was a lovely elderly woman who was originally from Minnesota and who had moved here for love when she was 18 and has never been back to the states. She was very knowledgeable ... read more

Today was the day of hiking. I’m not sure what we were thinking when we booked a hiking tour in the morning and a walking tour in the afternoon, but the result was we were able to see a lot of Wurzburg and get in a lot of steps! Wurzburg is a city of about 125,000 people located in Germany’s Bavaria region. It is mostly known for its Baroque architecture and Franconian wine. 90 percent of the city was destroyed by the British with a single firebomb attack on March 16,1945. There was no military presence or industrial base in Wurzburg at the time, so the British destroyed the city as only an act of revenge, or to demoralize the Germans. Wurzburg had intentionally stayed away from industrialization precisely because it did not want to become ... read more

Today was an easy morning, as we were able to sleep in a little later, grab a quick breakfast in the restaurant as the boat was pulling into the dock at Koblenz. From When we got off the ship, we could see the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress and cable cars above us, but we weren’t visiting the fortress, we boarded the bus for a short ride to Marksburg Castle. Originally built in the 12th century, and updated through the 15thcentury, it is one of the only castles on the Rhine that has never been destroyed or fallen into disrepair. It passed through various hands through the centuries until it was donated to the German Castles Association in the 1900’s and became the head office of the association. The head of the German Castles Association actually lives in the ... read more

We woke this morning to find the ship has left Amsterdam and we are about to dock in Kinderdijk. We both had a great nights sleep and have recovered from any jet lag. We are ready to take on the world or at least the Netherlands and begin our vacation in earnest. After a quick breakfast, we were ready to begin our walking tour of the Kinderdijk windmills at 8:30. Our local tour guide Ben is a volunteer for a windmill preservation group, and is very knowledgeable about these water pump type windmills. There are other windmills in eastern Netherlands that are used as actual mills to mill grain, but these windmills in Kinderdijk are water pumping windmills used to reclaim land that is below sea level since about 40 percent of the Netherlands and 100 ... read more

Today is the last day of our trip, we fly back tomorrow morning. After last night’s wonderful experience with Gaudi’s Park Guell, we were really looking forward to seeing Gaudi’s masterpiece church this afternoon, but first we have a brief excursion just outside of Barcelona to Catalonia to visit Montserrat. Monserrat, the ”Serrated Mountain” is the name of a series of 3 peaks of the Catalan mountain range. It’s highest peak is about 4000 ft. The rock formations are beautiful, and there are three ways to get to the top. There is a cable car, a cog railway, and a couple of roads. Since we have a bus, we naturally took the road. Once at the top, there is a funicular that takes you to the actual peak, but there isn’t really anything at the peak, ... read more