Reflections 2024
We got to Amsterdam early to explore some of the local sights–the Anne Frank house, the Rembrandt museum, and the canals, among other things. I was really hoping to see something about the Dutch East India company and the Dutch place in European imperialism; struck out on that. Of course, Amsterdam in those days was renown for its red light district (Carolyn’s comment: “The women are all so beautiful”) and weed. It was also bicycle friendly, like so much of Europe.
Having travelled Tauck before, I knew the ship would have bicycles, and brought gear to ride in some of the cities, which was a great way to cover a 
lot of ground. When we left Amsterdam, the rest of the trip remains a blur of castles guarding the Rhine (or shaking down vessels traversing it; we visited one, and I remember it as cold and drafty, but better than the peasant houses below); cities such as Regensburg, the seat (sometimes) of the Holy Roman Empire’s parliament; and Nuremberg, the scene of Nazi rallies, and the home of Albrecht Durer. It’s hard to tell one from the other from the pictures, but I’ve reconstructed a sampling of a wonderful trip that took us through the canals and rivers that linked European trade and history together. While the desire for a Rhine-Main-Danube canal dates from the 8th century, the current canal was completed only in 1992, enabling shipping traffic from the Atlantic to the Black Sea.
The first city after Amsterdam, Nijmegen, should have given me a clue about what we’d see. Claiming to be the oldest city in the Netherlands, 
Nijmegen had a park with a ruin that claimed to be from Roman times (a lot of the towns we visited had Roman roots), and near as I can figure was part of a palace inhabited by Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa. Nearby was a church from 1000 A.D., which, for all the world, 
looks Byzantine. The town square, however, is Western European. Like many of the other cities, Nijmegen was bombed heavily in World War II, and some of the buildings are reconstructions. None more so than Wurzburg, as I’ll discuss below.