Our Rhine River Cruise Begins

Today we would leave Montreaux and travel to the border city of Basel, Switzerland, to begin our cruise of the Rhine River.

The Tor awaits us

After a light breakfast, we met Gabriella, Dayne and Pam in the hotel lobby with our bags. Our driver reported around 0930 and 15 minutes later we were en route to Basel, traveling along the same route Jane and Capt. Larry drove to Montreaux.

River view from our balcony

Just beyond Zurich we proceeded onto a different autobahn and the roadside viewing changed from rolling hills with idyllic farms and herds of dairy cows, to a concrete and steel string of highly developed industrial complexes. Basel is Switzerland’s third most populous city and is located where the borders of Switzerland, France, and Germany meet on the Rhine River.

Our stateroom

This location makes the city an important logistics center for shipping of industrial goods. Basel also functions as a major center for chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and is home to Novartis and Hoffman la Roche, two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. We passed by the Novartis headquarters as we crossed the river to reach the docks where our ship was waiting.

Arriving at the dock, our ship, Tor, was ready for boarding. We were told as we checked in that a buffet lunch was waiting for us. Food already- a sign this was going to be a good trip!

Basel cathedral

We made our way to our stateroom, and our luggage was delivered before we could check everything out. Since we were among the very first passengers to board, it was easy to explore the ship before it became congested, even though the ship carries only 190 passengers and 50 crew. The Tor was built in 2013, making everything have that brand new appearance, and Capt. Larry could still detect that new boat smell… We met up with Pam & Dayne and had a great lunch which portended that the food was going to be excellent.

We returned to our stateroom and unpacked and organized our belongings.

Rear of the cathedral

After a short rest we headed back to the dock entrance to board a bus that would take us on a walking tour of Basel. The present day Basel was built around Basel Münster, or the cathedral of Basel which was built in 1019 around an earlier Roman Empire settlement.

Intricate stonework

We started our tour visiting Basel’s Münsterplatz, or the cathedral square, located in one of the oldest places in the old town of Basel. This square is part of the cathedral complex and a main landmark and tourist attraction.

Münsterplatz

Our guide next took us to the cathedral which was quite impressive for a gothic style structure.

The Rathaus

We next were guided to the Rathaus, or Basel’s town hall, another architecturally renowned building.

Rathaus details

We finished our tour with a visit to the river waterfront to view the Wettsteinbrücke, the second oldest bridge across the Rhine to the city of Basel. We had a little free time after our tour to sightsee with Dayne and Pam.

The Wettsteinbrücke

We made our way back to the bus pickup point and returned to our ship. During a magnificent dinner that evening, the Tor’s captain cast off and spun the ship around and headed downstream to begin our Rhine River cruise. And off we go!

We traveled through the night, dropping down through four locks and with Jane and Capt. Larry explaining to everyone who had not traversed a lock how they worked.

Black Forest countryside

One thing we noticed immediately was the loud noise from the engine room. Our suite was located aft and on the highest level, but these longships only have 3 decks plus an observation deck for bridge clearance on the rivers. We were directly over the engines that provided the ship’s main propulsion and 3 levels up. There are four 900 h.p. engines aft with the outer two, port and starboard, mounted on pods so they could be rotated for maneuverability.

The resort's glockenspeil

When the captain had to rotate these engines to maneuver, we were rocked with a loud, vibrating, shaking that really didn’t allow us to sleep restfully. We figured that a suite in the middle of the ship would have much less noise and vibration. We arrived in Breisach, Germany around 0230 and were able to finally sleep after the ship docked.

We arose early the next morning and had breakfast before boarding a bus that would take us to the Black Forest. The Black Forest is located in an area known a Baden-Würtemburg which is shared by two German states with the Rhine serving as the western border and the mountains rising east of the Rhine Valley.

Glassblower working a piece

After an approximate two-hour ride in rainy weather, with Capt. Larry suffering from a rare and unusually severe bout of motion sickness, we arrived at a tourist-trap resort. The resort featured a Best Western hotel, a glass-blowing shop, and a cuckoo clock works, all of which were built to capture tourist dollars (or Euros) and none of which were originally native or historical to the area.

We first visited the glass-blowing shop and the adjacent gift shop where various glass pieces were available for sale. Some of the pieces were indeed impressive, but not enough for us to purchase.

Lots of clocks

We had issues with transporting delicate items in our luggage and no assurance that items damaged in shipment would be restituted without a major hassle. We next made our way to the cuckoo clock shop where we were given an introduction as to the different types of carvings and drive mechanisms and how the clocks are made.

All types of cuckoo clocks

Following this educational session, we wandered into the clock gift shop to view a vast array of clocks available for sale. There were clocks of every drive type with carvings of just about every imaginable theme. Prices started around $1,000 and ran up to $10,000 for the really large, elaborate pieces with lots of glockenspiel activity.

And big clocks

The cuckoo clock shop also featured a full-size glockenspiel display built into the side of the building. At 1100 we went down to the parking lot to view the glockenspiel display as it played out. We finished our resort visit by viewing a Black Forest cake assembly and decoration replete with the traditional cake, a cherry jam, kirschwässler, loads of whipped cream, cherries, and chocolate shavings.

Assembling the cake

It wasn’t really different than how we make our Black Forest cake other than having the kirsch which we can never find and have to substitute with cherry liquor. We boarded our bus and headed back to our ship where we had a delicious lunch of soup, salad, and sandwiches.

The finished product

For the afternoon entertainment, everyone had the option of going into Breisach for shopping.

Inside the glockenspiel

Capt. Larry was still not feeling completely well, so we opted to stay behind and rest up. That evening we attended the captain’s dinner and met another couple, Leo and Agnes, from Navarre, FL.

The glockenspiel in action

We traded stories about the Emerald Coast. Leo is also an adjunct professor at the University of Northwest Florida where Capt. Larry received is degree in oceanography. Small world.