Next day the ship stopped in Breisach, Germany which is called “The Gateway to the Black Forest”. I always wanted to hike in the Germany’s Black Forest as we have an area called the Black Forest just north of Colorado Springs. It is a lot less forestry after the fire in 2012, but still a lot of trees in the area.
Anyway, Germany’s Black Forest is bigger and has more streams and waterfalls. I know that Colorado Springs Black Forest has no waterfalls. Our friends do E-Bikes through the Black Forest which is an all-day event. They came back and said it was really enjoyable and the scenery was great.
Our tour wasn’t until the afternoon, so we decided to explore the town of Breisach. The highlight is a cathedral on a hill called St. Stephenmunster. The town was quiet that morning but had nice squares with interesting shops. Since we weren’t shopping we didn’t go to into any shops but enjoyed walking and sitting in the squares. Then we decided to go up to the cathedral. There was a wall around the neighborhood, so we though we had to go down the street and walk around the cathedral, but that turned out to be a wasted effort. On the way back we found and opening to go through.
The cathedral was up a steep hill, so it wasn’t the most fun climb, but now we were determined to get there. We couldn’t see the cathedral, but knew it was uphill, so we kept on walking. We saw a little path that had a turn. I told my wife to wait while I checked it out. I made a slow dash up and saw it led directly to the cathedral. There were no signs. I waved my arms to my wife to come up and went down to walk with my wife. This turn ended up being good as the road we were on was a longer walk to the other side of the cathedral. So, I found a shortcut.
We walked around the grounds and read some history of the Church. However, the entrance was on the other side. When I asked my wife if she wanted to go in the Church, she said we accomplished our goal and we should go back to the ship. While walking to go down, we saw our English friends come up the hill on the other side of the cathedral. We waved but they didn’t see us. Probably tired from walking up the hill.
After a delicious lunch where we had a Black Forest Cake Sundae for dessert (delicious) we took the bus to the Black Forest. They had three choices of events. My wife decided to watch the coo-coo clock demonstration and I decided to go on the hike. Our guide took us about half a mile on the hike and said we could follow the trail to a waterfall. The group took off based on walking ability and I was part of the lead group, but my asthma was acting up. Then the trail came to a spot where there was a part to walk with no hand rail and it was like a cliff next to the trail. I get vertigo from heights so decided that this would be a good time to turn around. I talked to this man from England I met at the winery the day before and he said they never made it to the waterfall, even though they walked farther then they expected, so I was glad I turned around.
When I got back down I started to look for my wife. I didn’t find her right away, probably because I got distracted with looking at the coo-coo clocks. They were very nicely made, but we certainly don’t need another clock that makes noise in our house.
I found my wife and watched a demonstration of a Black Forest Cake being made. I was impressed on how little time it took. When we went on the ship the cruise director gave a speech how we would disembark and how there would be Viking people to help us at the Basel Airport. I think everyone there was worried about their flights due what was happening to the airlines. My goal was to make it to the United States the next day, to Denver hopefully.
We enjoyed a nice dinner that night saying bye to new friends. The enjoyable part of the trip was done, now for the flight home the next day.
