Captain Simon’s Viking Cruise

My American PBS watchers are no doubt familiar with the Viking cruise…those riverboat cruises in Europe advertised during your Downton Abbey fix.  Today we were lucky to have our own personal  river cruise with Captain Simon - one of Janka’s friends here. But our cruise was more to Rich’s liking than a Viking cruise could ever be.  He was able to talk “ boats” with Simon aboard his boat while we ladies enjoyed food, wine and conversation.

We launched from Konz, and were on the Moselle and Saar rivers in German wine country.  We were able to cruise past small towns like Igel….which the Germans tell me means “hedgehog” and the internet says is named for “eagle”.,,.either way, we saw no hedgehogs nor eagles, but did encounter many swans. 

And even some signets (no I didn’t remember the name for baby swans,…Simon was able to pull out that fact for me). 

We also saw a turtle and plenty of other birds.  But mostly we enjoyed the relatively quiet waters, and passed vineyards and small towns. 

We had some fantastic weather and even went for a swim n the Moselle.  

For dinner we went to the campground restaurant near the boat mooring and enjoyed a local band rocking old Eric Clapton and Deep Purple classics.  It felt very much like a Saturday we would have at home on the Finger Lakes - and was so much fun.   

Thanks Captain Simon and Simone …and Janka and Katja…for showing us our alternative life if we move to Luxembourg - because wherever we live we know Rich is going to be boating.  It was a great day.