We started our final day of our trip in Breisach, Germany. We had a view of this beautiful cathedral up on the hill.
It was the rainiest of the days, so we had to pull our the bright red Viking umbrellas. You could spot us from a mile away. We took Kris for a forced march around the city that turned out to actually be uphill both ways. Luckily, it was pretty.
The view up at the Breisach cathedral
After lunch, we headed toward Colmar to learn about the famous battles of the Colmar corridor and the American soldier Audey Murphy’s one man stand. Our tour guide was an amazing story teller. Standing in front of this memorial and the spot in the woods that the battle occurred, our guide transported us back to 72 years ago. It was the most emotional part of our trip. Kelly and I have visited a couple concentration camps, but we had not visited any battle grounds. It was very moving.
We continued the journey of battlegrounds from 1945. As we drove from the first spot to this memorial below up on a mountain, our guide pointed in all the directions that the soldiers came from. He explained how the American troops came up over the mountain from the Rhône area. Additionally, which direction the German troops came from and which cities they had taken over. We visited some of the first French cities liberated.
The sunset was spectacular.
Our next stop was a WWII museum. It contained artifacts from American, English, French, and Germany troops.
After an afternoon of reverence and learning, we finished our last night on the cruise with a celebratory cocktail with the crew.
The staff was so amazing to us. We couldn’t have asked for better service. We cheers to them and all they did. Then, they all gathered and sang us silent night in English, even through it was explained that English was not any of their native language. They were great!
It even made Kris cry, ok ok I got all teary eyed too. I am my mother’s daughter and all...
Most of the evenings we are in the dining room, but we wanted a quiet last night. So, we ate up on the Aquavit Terrace. Luckily we did, we were able to have front row seats to two of the locks. It was very interesting to watch them work. We were going up river, so this makes it so we can go up in elevation. This is a series of pictures watching us rise from the bottom to the top in like 15 minutes.
And of course a standard lock selfie
As you can tell, we were all pretty enthralled. Don’t judge our nerdiness...
When we went wine tasting, we bought a bottle of Cremant d’Alsace, the region’s sparkling wine. We opened it and celebrated our last night of a very wonderful and successful vacation.
We had so much fun and are so sad it is over. We head out from Basel in the dark of the night, just in time to celebrate Christmas!
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