Wordless Wednesday: swan songs

Luzern: the river to the lake

We said good-bye to our fair Alruna in Basel, Switzerland (our fourth country in a week!), where the cruise-worthiness of the Rhine ends. So the river in my title here is the Reuss, fourth-longest river in the country, and the one that flows into the gorgeous Lake Lucerne and provides wonderful riverside attractions along the way. That's what I'll show you this time, and next time I'll focus on the lake.

Viking put us on a bus in Basel, and we were ferried in comfort to Luzern and our post-cruise extension, learning some interesting stuff about Switzerland along the way. And as wonderful as the cruise was, we think we might just have saved the best for last.

Our hotel in Luzern (this is the German spelling and I'm trying to stick with that, since the city is in the mostly German-speaking region of Switzerland*) might not have been quite as swank as the one in Amsterdam, but it was very nice and in a great location. The picture below shows you what it looks like from the lake...yes, it's named the Art Deco Hotel Montana, with no reason given for the western U.S. reference.

It was a short walk (and an even shorter tram ride) to all the attractions along the riverside. And it was in a nice neighborhood; I'll show you below the view from our room and the spectacular view from the restaurant where we got to eat our included breakfast. And,  it was easy to get to a super-photogenic walkway along the lakeshore as well. (Photos from that stroll next time.) To get down to that walkway, you don't have to walk around the block, or even take a prosaic elevator. There was the cool funicular you see above on the right, instead!

we didn't have a lakeside view from our room, but this was nice anyway

not a bad view to accompany your eggs cooked to order...

But let's get back to that riverfront. 

Practically any google image search you perform for Lucerne (or Luzern) will get you lots of professionally-framed photos of the Reuss and the famous Kapellbrücke (or Chapel Bridge) which spans it. So rather than show you one of my attempts at this famous scene, I thought I'd share some off-to-the-side views of the iconic structure.

(You know that a landmark is the symbol of a city when you even get a cookie in its shape in your hotel room...see it at left!)

I took a picture that highlighted this tower, too...

...as well as this one from the bridge itself, looking upstream:

Looking back the other way, you can just see the bridge in the background, along with the handsome church that also dominated the view above. It's the Jesuit Church, one of two impressive houses of worship that we toured. More about the interiors in a later post.

You can see more of the bridge's span in this photo. The Reuss is a pretty wide river, this close to its mouth at the lake:

Both sides of the river are simply stuffed with attractions, like the church, and amenities, like the fine Italian restaurant where we hazarded an indoor dining experience (we figured even if we caught covid there, it wouldn't show up on our needed-to-go-home tests, which were happening the next morning; and they were negative).

After dinner one evening, Henry and I took a stroll further upstream and discovered yet another covered bridge that afforded some good positions for photos of the narrowing, but still formidable, Reuss...

What a beautiful city this is! And at an incredible location. Next time I'll go more wide-angle for you and show you some of the surrounding scenery, in particular the spectacular lake. Here's a teaser:

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*As most of you probably know, Switzerland has three well-known official languages: German, French, and Italian. It also has a fourth, that's not as well-known: Romansch. That explains the multi-language translations of the river we cruised on in my first post about this trip: Rhine/Rhein/Rijn/Rhin/Rain, or English/German/Dutch/French/Romansch. As a language nerd, it's not surprising I found Switzerland such an intriguing place!

Wordless Wednesday: easy to guess the next stop

 

Wordless Wednesday: aiming for the edge

 

Last day in Germany

A ways upstream from Strasbourg and Kehl is the charming little town of Breisach, Germany. We spent a very pleasant, if strenuous, morning hiking around its beautifully restored old city. (It needed restoration, as we were told the town was 85% destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II.)

Looking at the picture above, I think you can see where "strenuous" comes in. The picture was taken at close to river level, after we'd visited the church and other picturesque structures you can see up that very steep hill.

The white tower-ish building is this handsome gate, the Hagenbachturm, which was once a prison:

(You know that this is somewhat off the beaten tourist path when the only websites that come up describing this tower are in German.)

A similarly-constructed building nearby is this tower...

...which was labelled a "Kunstkreis." I believe this would translate as an arts district, or possibly an arts society ("Kunst" means "art," and "Kreis" is "circle."). Like the gate above, everything google gave me was in German.

The main architectural attraction of Breisach is, not surprisingly, the big church, which is St. Stephen's Minster. Originally built between the 12th and 15th centuries, the current structure is much restored after WWII bombing. One thing it has going for it for sure is its breathtaking (literally!) location, atop Breisach's hill. In this look from its grounds back down toward the river, you can see our lovely Alruna:

Here's its romanesque tower...

...and here's how it looks from river level, along with the rest of the old city:

There is more to Breisach than these restored buildings, though. A view looking the other direction from up top shows the more prosaic side of town, with the hills of the Black Forest in the background (more about this area shortly):

We didn't walk down into this main part of town, but saw that people live in the old city, too; it's not just photogenic restored buildings. It being Easter weekend, we saw that more than one household was decorated for the occasion...

...and another showed support for Ukraine...

And they really like their gardens:

After refueling with a nice lunch onboard (much needed after the elevation gain), we boarded a bus to the Black Forest. We took the scenic route there and saw some lovely countryside from the bus windows:

I don't know the names of these cute villages, but one of the names I made a note of I saw on the google maps route we took: Glottertal. So that might be one of them. Our destination was a rather overly-touristy hotel in the mountain town of Breitnau: Hotel Hofgut Sternen. It comes complete with a gift shop (where I did find some good souvenirs) and the obligatory Black Forest cuckoo clock:

A famous French queen apparently stopped by here, too; I think they said she was on the way to her marriage (that didn't turn out so well):

the sign reads: "Marie Antoinette was a guest in 1770"

We were able to take a short walk in the woods, which were very nice, although not much different from Colorado and certainly not particularly magical. But here's something you don't see in the Rockies:

This is the Ravenna Bridge, or Viaduct, and it's a very impressive structure built in the 1920's and rebuilt after the war. The name doesn't have a connection to the town in Italy, but, according to Wikipedia, is from the French word for ravine.

The bus route back to the Rhine was more expeditious and took us through the German town of Freiburg; we were soon to learn that there's a city of the same name in Switzerland, and that country's our next destination! After a final dinner and restful night aboard Alruna, we disembarked in Basel the next morning, ready for the last stage of our European adventure. Stay tuned!

Wordless Wednesday: ugly duckling all grown up

 

On the German side of the river: Kehl

Last time I showed you a bit of Strasbourg, which is a pretty famous French city. Not so many people know (at least, I didn't) that a perfectly charming little town is right across the Rhine from it.

As you can see above, Kehl's fruit trees were in totally full bloom, and we had a nice stroll around the town, which was much less crowded than its French sister. Viking (of course) provided us with a helpful map that guided our free form excursion, and we're glad we chose this more relaxing option for our afternoon.

There's even a handsome church in Kehl's "downtown"...

...as well as their own war memorial...

The memorial is at one end of this lovely "lake":

The reason for the quotation marks: the body of water is called "der alte Rhein," or the "old Rhine." I assume this means that it was part of the river long ago, before its channel was modernized to make shipping easier by cutting down on meanders.

Perhaps the most pleasant part of our stroll was along the river front as it is today, where there's a very nice linear park made out of the floodplain:

In addition to the lovely wildflowers, there were some interesting pieces of public art in this area, like this whimsical collection of birdhouses...

...as well as this interesting bronze ribbon, which tells the history of the town as you follow along its moebius-strip-like surface:

Kehl, Germany: another nice surprise excursion. And our next-to-last stop in Germany!