Where to this time? We are spending 10 days in the southern part of the Rhine River region – AKA “The Romantic Rhine” – and then a few days in London before heading home.

I have been excited about this trip since we planned it over a year ago. We will end this portion in Cologne, which holds a very special place in my heart. It will be a nice blend of new places and places I’ve been before; much of it will be new for Ash, which is hard to do!

The details of this trip changed dramatically at the last minute. It was supposed to be a 7 day river cruise from Basel to Cologne. Tuesday afternoon we were notified there wasn’t enough water in the area so they diverted the tour to start in Amsterdam. We had heard this could happen and had already decided we were doing the trip as planned anyway. So Tuesday night we took the refund option, rented a car, and booked the 7 nights we would have been on the boat but still along the Rhine. A couple of the stays are in castles so we are pretty excited about that. We are actually more excited about the trip now than we were when it was a river cruise.

We left Sacramento Wednesday lunch time and stayed that night with friends in San Francisco. I worked on Thursday from there then we had a 7:30pm flight to London.

It took us less than an hour to deplane, go through immigration, get our bags, recheck them, go through security again and make our way to my favorite lounge of all time. This is a British Airways lounge in Heathrow and I was here many times between 2014-2018. I have been in many lounges since, but I’m pretty sure this is still the biggest one, certainly among them. Above is is the coffee bar and the sandwich station.

Soups above, then fresh entrees and the buffet in the back.

BBQ chicken, spicy cauliflower salad, carrots, peas, lentil and couscous salad. Then a photo near where we were sitting. This is maybe 20% of the place.

At the far end is a corner view sitting area for those that love to watch planes on the runway. And ice cream! Strawberries & cream, and honeycomb.

Above and below: Basel from the plane.

Basel is nestled at the borders of Switzerland, France, and Germany.

The airport gives you a choice of exits: France or Switzerland.

A little bit of panic as we got to our room, and I realized that I left my backpack in the Uber. Thankfully, Ash contacted the driver and he returned it pretty quickly untouched.

We were tired, but a little hungry so decided to just have a late dinner in the hotel. We are staying at a Marriott.

Our friend, Shaye, who lives in Madrid, joined us for the weekend. You may recognize her from our Paris trip last October where she joined us for a weekend then as well.

We shared some french fries as an appetizer. I had the pumpkin soup at the top; Ash and Shaye both got a roasted pumpkin with buffalo cheese dish. And we shared a lemon meringue pie with strawberry sauce. 

It was close to 10 PM local time by the time we were done so we pretty much went straight to bed.

It is now just after 5 AM, Saturday, September 19. Another thing that we are excited about for this trip is that, other than places to stay, we have very little planned. It’s going to be two weeks of just doing whatever we feel like doing that day. Today will include some shopping for sure, but other than that, we will make it up as we go along. That is rare for us and one of our favorite things to do. We look forward to you coming along to see how it turns out.