06. Viking Northern Europe

Once upon a time… This is the cruise for Grimm fairy tale lovers. We take a Viking River Cruise through Northern Europe, from Antwerp, Belgium, through the Netherlands, Germany, and ending up in Switzerland.

The highlight is the iconic Middle Rhine river, bejeweled with the densest stretch of castles along any river in the world! For about 40 miles, there's a castle nearly every mile, inspiring your imagination and your own personal Cinderella story. It's one of the oldest and most iconic river cruise trips in the world, and the reason many people take this cruise.

But it's not all about the castles! There are overnight stays in fascinating, historic and hip cities like Antwerp and Amsterdam, and stops along the way in the European countryside.

We'd all been to Europe, and agreed, this was a whole new approach to European travel. No dragging your bags on and off trains to take in more than one city or country. And it includes smaller ports of call along waterways you probably wouldn't see off the cruise.

We visit the Netherlands' 'Silver City', with a 400 year tradition of silver smithing, and meet both an avant garde silver smith, and someone who's preserving a centuries-old tradition of Dutch filigree. Near Gouda (yes, it's a city AND a cheese!), we tour an artisanal cheese farm, and in the quaint mediaeval town, learn how to make one of the Netherlands' favourite treats, syrup waffles!

From tours of wineries on the nearly vertical slopes of the Moselle wine valley, to a mid-morning Oktoberfest -- who knew how quickly we could learn to polka? – our cruise introduced us to flavours of Northern Europe none of us had experienced before.

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