The Sunday Telegraph Sunday 1 September 2019^ *** 5
aptouring.co.uk) offers a chance to
rub shoulders with royalty, with an
exclusive tour and cocktail
reception at Princess Heide von
Hohenzollern’s Namedy Castle in
Germany (from £2,795 departing
Nov 11 2020).
Another rare opportunity is
offered by Viking River Cruises
(0800 319 6660; vikingrivercruises.
co.uk) to see the once-in-a-decade
Passion Play, which returns to
Oberammergau next year.
Availability is unsurprisingly limited
on the 11-day Oberammergau, the
Alps and the Rhine itinerary (from
£4,345), so act fast.
Other companies sailing the
Rhine include Avalon Waterways
(0330 058 8243; avaloncruises.co.
uk), CroisiEurope, Fred Olsen River
Cruises (0800 787 0733;
fredolsencruises.com/river-cruises),
Saga (0808 163 3443; travel.saga.co.
uk/cruises), Tauck (0800 810 8020;
tauck.co.uk) and Titan Travel (0808
278 5121; titantravel.co.uk). Solo
travellers are well served by Riviera
Travel (01283 880268; rivieratravel.
co.uk) – a Medieval Germany River
Cruise departing on Oct 25, 2020,
is especially for solos and has no
single supplement (from £1,899pp).
If time allows, it is possible to sail
the Rhine as far as Mainz, then
divert along the Main river, Main-
Danube Canal and Danube, ending
up in Budapest. The two-week
itinerary, covering three rivers
and five countries, is offered by
river cruise lines including APT,
Scenic, Uniworld, AmaWaterways,
Viking River
Cruises and
Riviera Travel.Jane ArcherFESTIVAL FEVER
If you can’t decide when to
go, let a festival be your
guide. Boppard (boppard-
tourismus-de) celebrates
the annual grape harvest
with food, wine and
fireworks at two autumn
wine festivals – they fall on
Sept 27-30 and Oct 4-6 this
year. The village of
Assmannshausen, near
Rüdesheim, celebrates its
pinot noir wine during an
annual Red Festival
(ferienwohnung-in-ruedesheim.de). A red
wine queen is crowned,
and there is food, wine,
music and dancing and a
display of red fireworks.
The festival is scheduled
for June 19-21 2020.
In Cologne, an annual
gourmet food festival in
front of the Chocolate
Museum (genussfestival-
koeln.de) serves up food,
wine, champagne, cheese
and more. Next year it will
take place on June 26-28.The best-known festival
is the Rhine in Flames
(romantic-germany.info),
when the river explodes in
a riot of colour. It is held in
different wine towns on
five weekends between
May and September. Two
of the events are still to run
this year – Sept 14 in
Oberwesel and Sept 21 in St
Goar/St Goarshausen. The
dates that have been set for
2020 are May 2 – Bonn;
July 4 – Rüdesheim; Aug 8- Koblenz; Sept 12 –
Oberwesel; and Sept 19 – St
Goar/St Goarshausen.
The River Cruise Line
has two special sailings,
departing on Sept 12 and
19 next year, where Lady
Anne actually sails with
the Rhine in Flames
illuminated flotilla. A
third sailing, departing
June 30, is timed for the
festival in Rüdesheim but
doesn’t sail with the
flotilla.
LIGHT UP
THE SKY
Fireworks over
the Rhine Valley
at the Rhine in
Flames eventCHOOSING A
CRUISE
The number of ships on the Rhine is
growing all the time. Viking River
Cruises launched seven on the river
this year alone. Riviera Travel will
introduce the all-suite Geoffrey
Chaucer in May 2020 and
AmaWaterways is launching the
AmaSiena, with a swim-up pool bar
and a chef ’s table, in July. Looking
ahead to 2021, Germany company
A-Rosa is building a four-deck-high
family-friendly river ship for the
Rhine that will operate partly on
electric power. Scenic’s eight-day Rhine Highlights
voyage from Amsterdam to Basel (from
£2,620pp) is a fairly typical itinerary,
staying overnight in the Dutch capital
and visiting Cologne, Koblenz,
Rüdesheim, Mannheim and
Strasbourg, but there are numerous
variations.
Several river cruise lines pair the
Rhine with the Moselle, a narrow
waterway lined with vineyards, where
you visit Cochem, a town with
half-timbered houses overlooked by a
medieval castle. A few itineraries also
visit the Roman city of Trier,
founded in 16BC, where the Porta
Nigra (Black Gate) and the house
where Karl Marx was born are among
the attractions. A new 12-day
Uniworld River Cruises itinerary on
board the River Queen combines the
Rhine with the Moselle and also
includes a trip to Baden-Baden,
Germany’s famous spa town (from
£3,239pp, departures begin April
21 2020). Sister company U River
Cruises (0845 678 2795;
ubyuniworld.com) pairs
the Rhine with the Main.
One-week Rolling on the
Rhine cruises between
Amsterdam and Frankfurt
are pitched at younger
travellers and offer pub
crawls, food tours and
cycle rides (from
£2,699pp). A new Game of
Wines excursion visits
Eberbach Abbey, which
served as a filming
location for the hit
television series Game
of Thrones.
A new tour from
Emerald Waterways
(0808 301 4170;
emeraldwaterways.co.uk)
for 2020 delves into the
Black Forest from the
gateway town of Breisach,
where a guided hike will
build an appetite for Black Forest
gateau tasting. The 11-day Jewels of the
Rhine with Lucerne and Zurich adds
extra time in Switzerland to a standard
week-long itinerary (from £2,995pp,
based on Aug 8 departure).
Scenic (0808 163 8070; scenic.co.
uk/river-cruises) has 15-day
itineraries that sail the Dutch and
Belgian Waterways before cruising
the Rhine, veering off along the
Moselle as far as Bernkastel-Kues, for
an excursion to Luxembourg, then
journeying on to Basel. The Scenic
Enrich programme raises the bar with
exclusive access treats, such as a
guided tour of Gamburg Castle in
Miltenburg in the company of the
resident baron and baroness.
The two-week Magnificent Europe
cruise offered by APT (0800 012 6683;WILLING
AND CABLE
Ehrenbreitstein
Fortress in Koblenz,
above; Zurich, top;
Chocolate Museum
in Cologne, leftCHOC’S AWAY
The Chocolate
Museum in CologneCRUISE
CONTROL
An APT ship
travels past
Namedy Castle,
GermanyKEY STOPS
COLOGNE sits astride the river,
with great shopping, restaurants and
bars and a magnificent cathedral. The
Document Centre, in the former
Gestapo headquarters, tells of the rise
and brutality of the Nazi regime. There
is light relief – and the all-important
tastings – in the Chocolate Museum.
STRASBOURG has a hybrid
culture, having changed hands
between France and Germany five
times since Napoleonic times. The
result is a mix of architectural styles,
Franco-German street names and local
dishes such as choucroute (French for
sauerkraut), pork knuckles and
schnitzel, which would all be at home
on a German dinner table. Petite
France is a charming district with
cobbled streets, canals and half-
timbered houses.
KOBLENZ, where the
Moselle meets the Rhine, has
narrow streets and churches
to explore, and a cable car
across the river to
Ehrenbreitstein Fortress
across the river. You can’t miss
the town – a monumental
equestrian statue of Kaiser
Wilhelm I at the confluence of
the two rivers, celebrates the
creation of a unified Germany.
RUDESHEIM, at the
southern end of the Rhine
Gorge, is a small town built on
wine where an extraordinary museum
curating music machines from years
gone by is a popular attraction.
MANNHEIM, rebuilt after heavy
bombing in the Second World War, is
where Karl Benz built the first motor
car; nearby
Heidelberg has a
spectacular castle
and great hiking
trails.
The Gutenberg
Museum in MAINZ
houses a priceless
Bible printed in
1455 by Johannes
Gutenberg, the man
who invented the movable type
printing process.
BREISACH is the gateway to the
Black Forest and Riquewihr a picture-
perfect medieval village nestling in the
vineyards of Alsace.RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws