I recently took a cruise of the Rhine River that went through five countries: Belgium, Holland, Germany, France and Switzerland, and it impressed upon me more than ever that there is no more luxurious way to travel than river cruising. Comfort and ease are the highest luxuries, and the river cruise delivers those like nothing else.
The key is that travel from destination to destination is effortless, actually a pleasure in itself. Your accommodation travels with you. The river cruise model of travel breathes new life into the multi-destination itinerary because it removes entirely the need to pack, repack and move.
On a river cruise you get this wonderful, paradoxical combination of being able to really settle into a place and make it a home, while at the same time you are actually traveling across the countryside. On my tour of the Rhine I stopped at a series of destinations across five countries in a week, and yet maintained a sense of supreme ease and comfort every step of the way.
The feeling of first entering your cabin after a long trip from home, being able to put down your things and to know that you can stay there for a week, that is heavenly luxury.
Embarking on a journey through Europe, we set out to visit Antwerp, Brussels, Basel, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Montreux, and Strasbourg, names on an itinerary that would soon be associated in my memory with a tapestry of vivid images, sounds, tastes and feelings, that would bring them to life and create lasting impressions in my memory.
I could go on at length about the on-board experience and all the specific ways it delivered luxury, but hopefully I’ve made the point. The pleasure of the ship could not be separated from the experiences of the destinations. It’s all wrapped up together, hand in glove, ship and trip.
I’ve heard people say that you can’t get a true feeling of a place in a short visit, but I am amazed at how much you can get. Of course, it’s only a snapshot, but it’s amazing how much of the culture, of the essence, of a country comes through in a single visit. It’s as if the whole is contained in every part.
On this trip I was struck by how much the cultures changed as you moved from country to country. It was impressive how powerfully distinct each cultural identity was, even though the countries seem close together in modern terms. It was proof of the tremendous durability of culture itself. Our skyscrapers could collapse, but our most enduring creation is culture, the way we live.
When we were in Holland it was unmistakably Holland, with windmills, dykes, reclaimed land that was once under water, on a rainy, misty day. I felt that if I had been knocked out and had woken up there, not knowing where I was, it wouldn’t take long walking around to figure out I was in Holland.
When we crossed into Germany, it was markedly different, with Bratwurst and sauerkraut and German beer, and a different vibe in the taverns and restaurants.
Dusseldorf, Germany, was a lively town, with Ferris wheels on both sides of the place our ship docked near the old city. It was hopping with energy and glowing with little shops and restaurants lining the cobblestone, pedestrian-only streets. It was easy to join in the festive mood of the place.
That was the night I discovered the hot tub. I lounged in it while a lively dance party was taking place on shore, only about 100 feet from where I was on the top deck. After the exhilarating feeling of sitting steaming in the hot water during a windy, drizzly evening, I was hooked. I went to the Jacuzzi every night after that.
Mannheim, Germany, has one of the largest palaces in Europe. Our river cruise offered a tour of the palace, or a walking tour of the old city, which is now known as the Turkish quarter. Although it was a weekday, it was All Saints Day, a religious holiday, and the government mandated closings of most stores. Some food establishments were allowed to stay open, but the whole area was abnormally quiet. Still, it was a beautiful city, with much history, and much to look at even on a rainy day.
Around the town of St. Goar, or Sankt Goarshausen in German, I took a bike ride along the Rhine. The bikes were assisted. They gave your pedaling a little boost, making it easy, but they didn’t take off like motorcycles. So they were very easy to handle.
The fertile, green landscape along the edge of the Rhine was a feast for the senses. The river’s edge was occasionally dotted by homes or palaces. On a bike there is no glass between you and the environment, you are part of it. And as you pedal and get your heart pumping, you breathe it into yourself. The place where our biking group stopped to turn back toward the ship was right across from the Lorelei Rock, which is justly famous for jutting some 400 feet out of the Rhine. It was a beautiful thing to behold, a rock with charisma, and one of those mysterious things that tells you in its very appearance of great geological forces that caused it to jut out of the earth the way it does.
Strasbourg, France, embodied the French sense of joie de vivre. The energy of thousands crackled in the air in the area around Strasbourg Cathedral, or the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, where we took a walking tour.
The city had a great cosmopolitan feeling, a sense of authority as an international city that has been at different times of its history part of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, then back and forth between France and Germany over and over for centuries.
The ship was our home, the place we returned to after visiting each city. It served its purposes so spectacularly, that it was a destination itself. As hand and glove are different orders of things, yet are indispensable to each other, the ship and the destinations were entwined. The destinations were presented to us via the ship.
The ship – some call it a boat, I call it a ship – was a lovely elegant thing, as river cruise vessels are. It was easy to feel an infatuation and develop an attachment to the lovely lady who was escorting us around Europe.
The manner in which the ship conveyed us from place to place was so splendid that the ship was as much of a highlight as the destinations themselves. It was a constant as we moved from place to place. It was so reliable, so comfortable, so friendly in every aspect, that it became a friend, as were the people of the crew who ran everything like sparkling clockwork.
Another destination was the Rhine itself, as well as the countryside that rolled by between our stopping points. The river spirit accompanied us the whole way. It was the force that buoyed us along.
The Rhine was a constant presence, our host through it all. “Vater Rhein,” as it’s called in Germany, “Father Rhine,” was the parent of all we saw that grew up along its shores on the nourishment it provided.
That river will be a part of me for the rest of my days.
Your humble reporter,
A. Colin Treadwell
Източник за тази статия
Наши спонсори са:
Български трактори на добри цени при изключително качество
