Guigon Travels

Day 7 – Walking Tour of Cologne

I meant to mention in yesterday’s post Dan’s exchange with the Hotel Manager when we checked in on Day 2 of the cruise, in which his response to Dan’s comments that we’re not used to getting waited on hand and foot was to “Get used to it.”

On Day 3 of the cruise, we got to have a “lie in” today, as Cathy the Canadian Cruise Director would say, before going on our shore excursion walking tour of Cologne. We didn’t arrive in the port until around 2:00 p.m., so the morning was a leisurely exercise in waking up at the more reasonable time of about 8:30 a.m., followed for me by a deep tissue massage from Vera, the Wellbeing Coach. Oh, my god, I desperately needed that and she delivered. My lower back and hips have been horribly out of whack since flying into Paris. I met with her again later in the day to help me do some stretches and recommend alternatives. She also suggested adding a pinch of salt to my water bottle to add electrolytes to combat water retention.

Our tour of Cologne (Koln) started pretty much as soon as we docked. Naturally it was pouring rain the entire time, right up until the tour ended. It was still better than the weather we left at home.

The tour guide was a really nice young guy (I regret I have forgotten his name) who gave us an overview of the community’s history, with a bit of the ridiculous tidbits thrown in for good measure.

This fountain (not currently working) commemorates the work that women historically did for the community.

About 90% of the city centre was destroyed during WWII following 262 separate Allied air raids. They rebuilt around and attached to the pieces that remained standing. The year the original buildings were made had been written on the buildings, and rewritten on the new buildings that replaced what had been destroyed. They were usually written with iron(?) numbers that you can see on two the following buildings.

In 1969 the community decided to erect this column to commemorate a local family by the name of Schmitz. For some unknown random reason, they also decided to acknowledge Neil Armstrong becoming the first person to walk on the moon with his left foot, 389,994 km and 100 metres from where this column was erected. Nobody, including Neil Armstrong at the time when he was told about it, knows why the community decided to make this connection.

Another weird thing, way back in the 1800s a puppet theatre comedic duo named Tuunes und Schal was created to reflect the opposing aspects of rural and urban German life. The rural population was represented by the round, large-nosed Tuunes as a simple, good-natured, tranquil soul. The urban population was represented by the tall, skinny Schal as a cunning, sly character usually wearing a tailcoat. The characters are best friends despite their differences. These life-sized bronze statues of Tuunes und Schal are placed just outside a pub named after them. It is said that if you rub Tuunes nose you will have good luck or romantic success, but if you shake Schal’s hand you will become wealthy. If you look close at the picture you’ll see that Tuunes nose is shinier than Schal’s hand. Dan rubbed Tuunes nose only after I had put my camera away.

Okay, the story behind this statue: The soldier at the top is Jan von Werth. The seated woman is Griet. Jan was originally a poor farmer who fell in love with Griet. Griet was a beautiful snob who spurned Jan’s proposal because she wanted a wealthier and more prominent partner. Devasted, Jan signed up to go to war. He worked hard as a soldier and became a celebrated general. When he lead his triumphant troops into Cologne he saw Griet selling fruit at the market. Griet exclaimed at Jan’s success, “Jan, who would have thought it?” to which Jan replied, “Griet, the person who should have done it!” and turned away from her. Jan had a full, successful, wealthy life and Griet remained an unmarried virgin for the rest of her life.

Underneath this clock (you probably can’t see it very well… I kind of wish Dan had brought his real camera with him today) is the head of a bearded man. I can’t remember who he’s supposed to be or what the history is supposed to be about it, but he’s called the Platzjabbeck and when the bells ring every hour he rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue. Like I said, some weird stuff here.

Speaking of weird, one more for you: the Kallendresser copper sculture on a building across from the old town City Hall. Apparently the motif of exposing one’s butt in the general direction of authority dates back to the Middle Ages, although this particular sculpture was created in 1957-ish to replace the old one that was on a building destroyed during WWII. This one is of a boy mooning in the direction of City Hall, meant to convey disrespect to authorities.

Did you know that this is where Eau du Cologne was created? Now you do. We did not get any; not a perfume person.

Also, Cologne’s favourite snack apparently is a donut called the Berliner. We had one, and it’s pretty much what we in Canada would call a Bismarck. Funny story, and one I wish I had found a T-shirt with the meme about it, when JFK came to Berlin he said, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, which the people of Cologne laughed at because all they heard was “I am a donut”.

The Cologne Cathedral is “a renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture” (quoting Wikipedia here, so…). It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. It is massive and detailed in its architecture, and is the tallest twin-tower church in the world. But what it’s also known for is that where the majority of Cologne was destroyed during WWII, the church remained standing as a landmark for Allied Forces to navigate from. The Allied bombers absolutely flattened the rest of the community.

We took a stroll through the train station, where Dan required assistance with using the self-help checkout till at the grocery store. It was in German, and didn’t have an English option. The police arrived in force shortly thereafter, but don’t worry, it wasn’t for us. It was for the fans of the Arsenal football (soccer) team, who were being rowdy on their way to the match against Bayer Leverkusen.

Cologne is also known for their love-lock bridge, which they blew up in WWII to prevent the Allied Forces from crossing the Rhine. They rebuilt the bridge to accommodate train and pedestrian traffic, instead of vehicles, and now 12,000 trains a day pass over that bridge in both directions. In the 1970s someone (a bunch of someone’s) started locking padlocks to the bridge with their initials engraved as a demonstration of their everlasting love. They would then toss the key into the river, symbolizing the impossibility of breaking or removing the lock. Since then there have been so many locks added that they are estimated to number over 300,000 and collectively weigh over 100,000 pounds.

We returned to the ship, relaxed for a bit writing the previous (original) blog on my iPad, before attending the Daily Port Talk. This evening’s dinner was in the Crystal Dining Room, yet another fine dining experience (really, “chef’s kiss”). The evening entertainment was from a local singer performing a variety of songs old and new. I think her name was Jeneanne (?). Anyway, she was very entertaining. We turned in shortly after the performance, as tomorrow will be another relatively early day.

Gute Nachte!

Adelle and Dan

Day 5 – Eurostar to Amsterdam; Scenic Rhine Highlights Boarding

Day 6 – Walking Tour of Amsterdam; sailing starts tonight

Our effort to get a good night’s sleep was completely thwarted. Neither of us slept at all. Between being too hot (both the room and my internal furnace) I did not get more than half an hour of actual sleep. Regardless, the breakfast buffet in the hotel was pretty good. They served it out of the cellar, all lined in stone walls.

The taxi we ordered arrived as scheduled and brought us to Gare du Nord, where we had a moment of panic when we discovered you have to pay a euro to use the toilets. Finding a coin in my bag took some doing, but all was well in the end.

We were seated in first class on the Eurostar train, which was a sight better than the flight. I at least was comfortable enough to actually sleep for about an hour, and Dan was able to relax. The less-than-four-hour ride took us through 5 stops going through 3 countries: Brussels in Belgium; Antwerp in Netherlands; Rotterdam, Schiphol International Airport, and finally Amsterdam Centraal.

The Scenic representative Emko was waiting right on the platform for us rather than in the terminal, and brought us straight out to our driver Casper, who took us for a lovely 20-minute drive to the port in Zaandam. At the port, Scenic had people waiting to help us out of the car, take our bags to our room for us, and welcoming us everywhere in between.

We registered and they assigned us our key fobs. We use them to get into our rooms of course, but also to check on and off the ship. If we don’t scan back in by the time we’re supposed to they’ll know to start looking for us before departing. If we forget to scan out they won’t know we’re missing and we’ll have to catch up to the ship at the next port of call. So, scan out and scan back in!

The ship is long, but not big, very comfortably accommodating the 97 passengers and 58 crew. There’s a pool and walking track on the sundeck, two dining rooms, a lounge, a fitness room, a salt spa, and a massage/facial room.

Our room is, well, roomy and includes a private balcony with a retractable full wall window and blackout blinds. The bathroom is perfectly sized, such that Dan can have a comfortable shower. And it’s a multi-head shower too. Everything is included, except the massages and facials. We have a stocked mini-bar, walking sticks, an umbrella, bathrobes, blankets to take outside.

Every night before supper there’s a Daily Port Talk with our Cruise Director Cathy (Canadian in the house!) to tell us about the next day’s itinerary and what to expect. We have a butler, housekeeping comes in every day, and does turn down service every night leaving chocolates on our pillows. We get one complimentary laundry service up to 1 kg. I could go on, but really, just look them up. It’s easier.

The day we arrived, despite being exhausted, we went for a walk in Zaandam, looking for the Inntel Hotel. Our butler Amel mentioned it looks like it was made out of legos, so we were curious. Sure enough, it looks like it was made of legos!

The next morning we had to wake distressingly early to leave for our Walking Tour of Amsterdam. Had our ship not had to change ports from Amsterdam to Zaandam we wouldn’t have had to leave until maybe 45 minutes later. As it was, we had to get up by 7:00 am to get ready, have breakfast, and get on the bus by 8:15 for the drive back to Amsterdam.

The tour guide was entertaining and informative, constantly reminding us to look both ways before crossing the street or we’d get run over by bicyclists. She made sure we understood that the bicycle paths were painted red to hide all the blood of the tourists who get hit by the bicyclists.

There are canals, canals everywhere! Whenever they needed more room for housing they’d build another set of canals. The homes in this part of the city are old, having been built on reclaimed marsh land on wooden piles which tend to settle and move. Some of the houses are leaning dramatically as a result. The homes are tall and narrow, usually with no more than two or three columns of windows. Our guide showed us the smallest house, with one column of windows, basically squeezed in the space between two other homes, as if someone saw this alleyway and thought to themselves, yeah, I can fit one more in there.

They have a relatively thriving house boat community, although their houseboats are nothing like most of ours. They’re long and narrow, moored on the canals within the city, and they own the part of the pier they’re moored to. They are also connected to the city water, sewer, and power. I was a bit surprised to see only one with solar panels.

Sadly we did not get the advertised herring tasting, but our guide did introduce us to poffertjes. They are a traditional Dutch batter cake, kind of like small puffed buckwheat pancakes served with butter and powdered sugar. We made a circuitous way back around to the Amsterdam Centraal train station where our bus was waiting to take us back to the Zandaam port.

We weren’t back to the ship for long before we set sail. Lunch was served in the main dining room, although we had the choice to eat at the River Cafe in the lounge. Honestly, we probably would have had an easier time controlling our food intake if we’d taken advantage of the Cafe, but we didn’t do that. Why? Because the main dining room served a complete buffet, and had the option to order from an a-la-carte menu. We also did not order from the a-la-carte menu for lunch. Why? Because like I said: buffet! Multiple types of salads, soup of the day, appetizers, cheeses, meats, pasta, desserts. I may have failed to mention that breakfast is served the same way as lunch, only with, you know, breakfast items. So yeah, our “diet” is doomed.

We participated in the afternoon trivia game hosted by the Enrichment Manager Hannah and her “ladies in waiting” (Enrichment Manager trainees). We went through our first canal lock this afternoon as well.

We listened to Cathy’s Daily Port Talk in preparation for tomorrow’s adventures. And enjoyed the Captain’s Welcome Cocktail before going for supper. We were invited to a special supper sitting in Portobello’s tonight. I’m not even going to try and describe how good that meal was, except to say phenomenal. Probably going to be using that word a lot this trip …

And we even stayed up for the evening entertainment starring Hannah performing “A Night at the Musicals”. Turns out Hannah is multi-talented, having attended a performing arts college. She has a lovely singing voice. We missed last night’s entertainment — Gala Strings Trio — We were just too tired to stay up, and as mentioned, we had to get up early today.

We’re looking forward to a solid night’s sleep before tomorrow’s excursions.

Welterusten!

Adelle and Dan

Day 3 – Louvre, Eiffel Tower

Day 4 – d’Orsay

Well, the jet lag hit us hard this time, but we didn’t realize how hard until we slept for 12 hours the second night in Paris.

The walks to the Louvre on the first day and d’Orsay on the second day took roughly 40-45 minutes, broken up at about 20 minutes to have brunch. Turns out the Palais Garnier (Paris opera house) is exactly half way between our hotel and the Seine. The Saturday walk was uneventful, and the places we stopped to eat were meh. The Sunday walk we stopped at Le Cafe de Paix, which was built in the 1800s and sits right across from the Palais, but otherwise it was just an all right place to eat, certainly not worth the price we paid. And it turns out if you sit outside you have to sit with the smokers.

Sunday’s route also brought us through the fashion district, where we passed numerous people who apparently — or apparently thought — they were famous celebrities. It took seeing a model testing poses in the street and double-cheek air-kissing an acquaintance, and the fancy black cars picking up who I assume were probably some kind of sports stars and their entourage to even realize where we were. At that point I figured I was making my own fashion statement wearing my classic Cabin Radio t-shirt.

Between the fashion district and d’Orsay there were no less than 2 street vendors selling what looked like snails being roasted over a garbage can fire in a shopping cart. In hindsight, they were probably actually chestnuts, but my brief look at them in passing suggested otherwise. Neither of us cared to take a closer look.

The Louvre was fantastic as usual, but there is just so much to see it’s hard to decide where to go when you only have one afternoon. It’s really a lot. But we got to see the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and Dan’s favourite was The Coronation of Napoleon, painted in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David.

The d’Orsay left a much better impression on us (hehe, see what I did there? If you know, you know…). We found its focus on artworks of the greats made for a somewhat more enjoyable visit, with many more familiar artists like Van Gogh (my hands down favourite), Renoir, and Degas. I can now say I’ve seen both versions of The Starry Night. And we’ve seen Rodin’s The Thinker and his intended place of thought above The Gates of Hell. Oddly, we didn’t get any decent (or even many) photos here. For the most part we were too engrossed in appreciating the artwork with our own eyes to capture them in our cameras.

Saturday evening we experienced a ridiculously expensive Grand Dame menu at Madame Brasserie’s in the Eiffel Tower. I won’t say it was worth the exhorbitant price, but it was a phenomenal meal with extraordinary service, and an excellent view of the Seine.

Sunday evening we took our hotel clerk’s advice and had supper at a place called Le Basilic. It was a whole 80 feet away from our hotel, but in the opposite direction from where we had been walking the last two days. It’s a lovely little place on the corner of a small triangular intersection. Mussels in wine cream sauce, beef filet Rossini-style, duck breast, and homemade dark chocolate mousse for dessert – absolutely fantastic! If you’re in the Montmartre area I highly recommend coming here for a meal.

Other than my hips, knees, and feet protesting almost the entire time, we enjoyed our brief stay in Paris. Tomorrow, however, is the beginning of a new chapter to this particular adventure, so an attempt at sleep must be made.

Aurevoir!

Adelle and Dan

Travel Day 1 and Day 2

05 and 06 March 2026

This is how we left Yellowknife Thursday afternoon:

A roughly 1.75 hour flight to Calgary, roughly 3 hour layover, and roughly 8.5 hour overnight flight to Paris later, and we arrived Friday afternoon to practically balmy weather in comparison. There’s supposed to be comparative photos on our arrival to the above, but I was tired enough to forget to do it…

The flights were uneventful, and WestJet service was very good, but our seats were not comfortable enough for a red-eye flight of this length, despite purchasing econoflex with extended comfort. Especially with at least one unhappy 18-month-old sharing the cabin (poor thing). I think we’re going to have to splurge next time on the Premium seats on the outgoing leg, because honestly it’s taking way longer for us to physically recover than it used to. It’s a non-issue going home because we’re flying during the day on that leg, so we don’t need to sleep on the way.

We had a very smooth passage through customs at Charles de Gaulle, aside from a brief hiccup with the passport scanner giving Dan some grief. But he wasn’t the only one having that problem, and staff was there to sort it quickly. Our luggage arrived promptly (whaaaatt?) and we found a legit taxi exactly where the signs said we would. The driver was really friendly and chatty, but kept showing us on his phone while he was driving where to find places to see. I still don’t know how he didn’t crash the car in the process. But he got us to our hotel in one piece for 80€ — which his fellow drivers thought was too cheap, but I feel like it was a lot.

To say the least, we are very pleased with this hotel!

Once we got settled and had a very short nap, we endeavoured to push through the jet lag and adjust to the local time zone by going for a walk up to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre (Sacred Heart Church). My intention was to take the funicular up to the church. That didn’t happen. We didn’t realize until we were pretty much there that the directions we were given walked us all the way up. We were pacing ourselves anyway (because, you know, tired) and it brought us past some lovely places, like this restaurant with a windmill on its roof: Le Moulin de la Galette, which has been there since the 17th century.

My hair was doing wonderfully weird things. I forgot how humid it is in Paris.

And an artists market. Sorry, no pictures of the market. But it was very busy pretty much everywhere, especially the church. We were way too tired to stand in the line to go inside, so we just walked around the outside of the church before taking the funicular back down.

The funicular turned out just to be an expensive ride down the hill, one that was way too full of people to even get a view, let alone a picture of the view, out the window.

We made our way back to our hotel, stopping at La Boheme Montmartre for supper. I had sea bream fillet while Dan had burrata with tomatoes and a pasta (macaroni) and ham dish. I forced myself to stay awake until about 9:30 pm, and then we crashed until 8:00 am Saturday.

Bonne nuit et bonjour,

Adelle and Dan

This was not supposed to be the trip it is this year. This was supposed to be Scotland Trip #3, and it was supposed to happen next month. However, work obligations on my part guilted me into changing our travel days to March instead of April. March, to my dismay, turned out to not be the greatest time to go to Scotland, at least not for our interests.

So what to do? Hmmm… well, we had talked about wanting to do a Rhine river cruise someday. So with some research I discovered a Rhine river cruise was a viable option in March. And after chatting with friends and getting a referral for a Canadian travel agent (Dani Hill Travel / Vulcan Vacations) we narrowed down the cruise line options, and settled on Scenic’s Rhine Highlights 8-night river cruise from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Basel, Switzerland.

I say “settle” but that’s very clearly settling up, not down. Scenic cruises are luxury cruises, so we’re paying a lot, but we’re getting a lot for it, too. A large room with a private balcony, butler service, laundry service, complimentary mini-bar, meals, entertainment, and shore excursions. There’s a fitness room, a walking track, a pool/hottub, a spa, etcetera. So there’s lots to be excited about on this cruise.

In an effort to alleviate the jet lag before getting on the cruise, we decided to spend three nights in Paris, and then we’ll take the train to Amsterdam to get on the boat. And we’ll be spending two nights in Basel before taking the train back to Paris and flying home. Hence the title: Planes and Trains and a River Boat … Off we go!