Travel Maven Blog ...... David Molyneaux posts from TheTravelMavens.com

Once a busy trade route, the Upper Rhine now offers history without crowds

River cruising in Germany and France 

By David G. Molyneaux, editor, TheTravelMavens.com

Outside the walls of the fortified city of Neuf-Brisach, France, with a design of the octagon-shaped city laid out in the grass.(Photos by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

NEUF-BRISACH, France — On a pleasant morning before the summer vacation season was in full swing, the bicycle shop in the Rhine River port city of Breisach, Germany, was closed. So my wife and I walked into France. We crossed the wide river bridge and trekked about three miles of quiet country roads to Neuf-Brisach.

 

Neuf means “new” in French (except when neuf means nine), and Neuf-Brisach was new in the late 1600s. Today, it is one of the few remaining fortified towns built during the reign of Louis XIV to guard the eastern border of France.

 

The town, which is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, is sleepy but still alive, surrounded by towering brick walls that seem impenetrable. In the Alsace, fortification was essential to surviving a seemingly endless stream of invading armies.

 

After a simple sidewalk café lunch, we visited the museum (10 euros) dedicated to Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, a French engineer who built 150 citadels and strongholds along France’s vulnerable borders. Their defensive designs are still considered masterpieces of military architecture.

Mississippi River cruising on the American Duchess

New ships, insightful port excursions update a nostalgic float

 

American Duchess, a 166-passenger modern paddle-wheeler of the American Queen Steamboat Co., is tied up at a port stop near Helena, Ark. (Photos by David G. Molyneaux and Fran Golden, TheTravelMavens.com)

By David G. Molyneaux and Fran Golden
TheTravelMavens.com

 

Natchez, Miss.

 

To many Americans, the rural south of Mississippi and nearby states remains a mystery. Travelers seldom talk with people who live here, whether visiting or not. Even guided tours of towns, monuments, and hallowed grounds tend to focus on the Civil War and a way of plantation life that ended, more or less, 150 years ago.

 

Through this countryside flows America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, which hasn’t changed much for centuries and remains relatively untamed, as recent floods attest.

 

Hard-picked cotton and Mark Twain floated this way, and so did the old paddle-wheelers no longer in service.

 

New vessels have modernized the accommodations and experiences of floating on Old Man River, so you may watch the South roll by, framed from a swath of natural beauty and peace (after the annual flooding dissipates).

 

You may visit an occasional antebellum mansion for antiques-viewing and cultural expositions that never seem fully to explain the past or present.

 

You may walk the battlefield of Vicksburg National Military Park to contemplate the “how-could-we-all-have-done-that.”

 

Today’s cruises on the Mississippi River also offer new excursions, designed for curious travelers to rummage about the river towns, and opportunities to get deeper onto the soil and closer to the soul of the South.

Ocean-going Crystal Cruises slides smoothly into the luxury niche on Europe’s rivers

 

Spacious and comfy top deck of Crystal Bach, cruising on the River Rhine (Photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

BY DAVID G. MOLYNEAUX

We were new passengers, my wife and I, when we boarded the Crystal Bach, docked at Mainz, Germany, on the River Rhine near Frankfurt. As we walked into the Palm Court lounge, fellow passengers made no secret of their curiosity. Most of them were at the midpoint of a two-week cruise from Amsterdam.

Warm and friendly, they acted as if we were new members of their private club.

“Welcome.” “You’re new, we haven’t seen you before.” “Just get onboard?” “Come join us.”

The cruise line could not have planned a better welcome.

When Crystal, which is known for its country club atmosphere on two luxury-style ocean ships, took an expensive plunge into the world of river cruising, I wondered how well the ocean product would translate when plopped onto a much smaller, less endowed river vessel.

To make it work, Crystal has built four of its own river ships that are warm, airy, and spacious with only 53 suites on vessels that could hold 90 cabins or more.

Ocean ships, river cruises add new shore excursions, active tours

More choices require more research to target experiences that are right for you

BY DAVID G. MOLYNEAUX

In Germany on the Rhine, my riverboat, the Viking Hild, stopped in the historic city of Mainz. The vessel’s basic complimentary walking tour included monuments to art and history, markets, churches, and the fascinating museum of Johannes Gutenberg where travelers may see two of the 29 remaining copies of the Gutenberg bible.

Stained glass windows by Marc Chagall in Mainz, Germany

All good, except what I wanted to see in this port, on this visit, were Marc Chagall’s nine stained glass windows in St. Stephen’s Church.

Chagall viewed these amazing church windows as a sign of post-World War II goodwill between the Jewish and Christian faiths, finishing the final window just before his death in France in 1985. He declined ever to return to Germany after the war so he never saw his windows in place. They did not exist when last I visited Mainz in the 1970s.

St. Stephen’s was not on the basic tour, which most passengers on the ship chose, but I had noticed the itinerary and picked a different guided walk. How did I know about the windows? I had read a magazine travel story about them while doing pre-trip research.

Even in this world where everything in organized travel seems to be handed to you on a silver platter — especially on river cruise tours — you need to know what you want to see and do.

Joie de Vivre brings a French effervescence to Uniworld’s Seine cruises from Paris into Normandy

 

Dessert selection at Le Pigalle, the main restaurant on Joie de Vivre. (Article and photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

PARIS

You don’t need to speak French to sail on the new Joie de Vivre, cruising the Seine out of Paris. But you will know from your first step aboard, at the dock about a 20-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower, that you are in France.

With its French fabrics, foie gras, daily arrays of local cheeses, and its hallways dressed in early 1900s caricatures by artist George Goursat (known as Sem), the Joie de Vivre is true to its French intentions. It was designed by Uniworld Boutique River Cruises as a floating Paris boutique hotel.

I especially like the concept of a Paris vacation that starts and ends at a hotel docked in the middle of the city and cruises the Seine for a week in high Paris style. The ship stops for excursions to some of France’s travel favorites: Palace of Versailles, Monet’s home and garden at Giverny, the old town and Gothic cathedral of Rouen, the port at Honfleur, and the memorials on Normandy’s Atlantic Coast, scene of the invasion of Europe by Allied Forces in 1944.

The intimacy of small-ship cruising

Getting to know fellow travelers aboard vessels of Windstar, Viking

Passengers on Windstar's Star Pride, top right, make a wet landing on Isla Parida, Panama, for a beach day, including a grilled lunch (Photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

In a cruise world where most of the advertising emphasis is on ships that carry thousands of passengers from port to port in a frenzy of activities and meals, consider that other, calmer options await.

The contemporary cruise business is not one-size-fits-all.

For vacationers who may be new to the idea of cruising and are looking for a small, casual ship, I have two recommendations from recent trips on two continents.

Aim for about 200 passengers

If you are willing to share your ship only with a smaller crowd — say, about 200 fellow passengers — consider Windstar Cruises’ sparklingly refurbished Star Pride (summers in Europe, winters in Panama and Costa Rica) or floating on Germany’s Rhine River aboard Viking River Cruises’ new Viking Hild.

These are ships without water slides, whiz-bang attractions or bartending robots.

Both, however, provide gentle reminders of the joys of intimate cruising.