Kim and I had such a great time on our Holidays on the Danube (a small riverboat cruise) last Christmas  we decided to try Grand Circle's Holiday Rhine River Cruise this Christmas.  Again, our Christmas holidays have become too similar and we wanted to do something really different.  We couldn't put up a real Christmas tree again this year due to our two wild and crazy Maine Coon cats Maximus and Trajan, our 16 lb. kittens.

   It was a memorable trip.  The highpoints of this holiday cruise were the busy and colorful Christmas Markets in Frankfurt, Mainz and Cologne, the fairy book castles high along the Rhine, the Cathedral at Cologne, and the excellent gourmet food and hospitality of the MS Concerto.  (Note:  better/fuller house wines would be greatly appreciated.)  A personal favorite was our midnight stroll around the fog shrouded Cologne Cathedral--beautiful, deserted, silent, eerie.  The canals of Amsterdam and the red-light district were also very interesting.  (If the Christmas Markets are important to you, they closed at noon on Christmas eve, so plan your holiday cruise carefully.)

   There were only 115 passengers on board the MS Concerto, and we got to know many.  There were 9 or 10 folks from the Denver area and we got to know them quite well.  The MS Concerto was just the right size, not many passengers, and we felt we were always treated as guests in someone's home.  Can't imagine we  would ever like to travel on a larger boat with a larger group and lose that individuality.

   Grand Circle caters to an older traveler and we were close to the youngest on the MS Concerto.  We found once again that older traveler often equates with well educated and well traveled professionals that have interesting stories to share.  The staff was even more  eager to please this year, and the food was even better.  This was a surprise as we had high expectations as a result of last year's trip. 

   We came close to missing our Christmas trip.  The day after we left it snowed 30 inches in Denver and shut down the airport for over 2 days--during the Christmas rush.  We kept up with events in Denver via CNN and USA Today.  We got home without any problems.  Then 2 days later it snowed another foot!  Rare for Denver.
 

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