We never skip a free breakfast and today is no exception. Our train leaves Copenhagen HBF at 9:37am. Our bags are packed for train travel, we have our breakfast and push our tremendous rolling bags down the street and into the station where we board at platform 14. Our train trip is a little over 4 hours, staying on the same train for the entire trip to Hamburg, Germany. My ticket indicates we are on carriage 28. The train will be in the station for only a few mi...

Today we have a Holland America tour to the Holstein Switzerland area of Germany including the town of Eutin, a visit to a local schnapps distillery, a German lunch and finishing up with a five lakes boat ride. It all starts at 10am when we board our bus at the pier. We had breakfast earlier and I had tried unsuccessfully once more to send out blogs on the ship's Internet. Now we are in the city of Kiel, Germany. Kiel is a port city in Northern Germany on the...

Finally, we got a full 9 hours of sleep. The alarm wakes us at 6am but with a more comfortable bed, room darkening curtains and quietness outside, we finally start to feel better. With sunrise at 4am, it always prevented us from sleeping in, along with the noise. My plan for today is to catch the train in town before 9 so we need to get started early. Up and out of the room by 7, we head to the Lido for breakfast. Karen doesn't have to make breakfast and s...

So today we have a day with nothing official to do except the Christmas Markets of Cologne. They have five markets. The larger Christmas markets are held in downtown Cologne. The booths near Cologne Cathedral are arranged around a huge Christmas tree, next to which is a stage for a diverse program of live music performances. At the "Heimat der Heinzel" on Heumarkt, visitors will be thrilled to find a spectacular skating rink. I was hoping to go to these two sin...

Today is the Marksburg Castle tour in the morning and Karen already decided that this tour was out. Towering above the riverside village of Braubach, the Marksburg is the only castle in the Rhine valley never to have been taken by force. This also means it’s one of the most complete medieval fortresses in Germany having never been damaged in either World Wars. These are mostly free tours put on by Viking and it appears they go these places all year long. ...