Our Rhine River Cruise Group is Complete!

Patti Mills-Roy
May 17
4 min read

First, we started with the “Original 8” in Milan for one night; then we grew to 27 of us with a tour of Milan and a Cooking Class and then another 20 people joined us in Lake Como, followed by Lucerne, Switzerland. Yesterday we boarded the AmaWaterways AmaSerena in Basel, Switzerland to sail the Rhine River with an additional 20 people joining us now for a total of 67 people! What fun!

So far, it’s been a wonderful trip with many highlights along the way and the one that makes my heart soar the most is the fabulous connections that everyone is making on this trip so far.

We have such a great combination of personalities with all seemingly getting along great. People from all walks of life and so many different regions within both the United States and Canada. It’s the best part of my job seeing people connect like this so magically.

I’m going to share a few of our other many highlights in photos including our wonderful hotel in Milan called the Gallia Excelsior Hotel – a 5-star Virtuoso endorsed Luxury Collection property with Marriott. I was so very happy with the amazing job they did for us in Milan with the 33 people who stayed there for either 1, 2 or 3 nights.

I actually met my contact with this hotel at a Virtuoso Travel Week conference in Las Vegas last August and she made it all happen along with her amazing Team at the Gallia Excelsior. The hotel is stunning and the Customer Service there was outstanding.

The original 8 of us started our first day with a fun “Best Street Food Tour” of Milan that included regional specialties at the most quaint, award-winning places throughout Milan that added such a great element to our first day and fed us wonderfully too! We enjoyed special local ham & cheese focaccia sandwiches, tasty Italian ‘montanarine’ bites in 3 different flavors along with one of my favorite Italian wines called Falanghina, followed by dessert that included some very special pastries and finally the icing on the cake, homemade gelato!

All were so very tasty and Marco, our guide, was excellent sharing all of these wonderful stops with us and telling us all about Milan along the way as well. We even had our first experience on the Metro – Milan’s very easy public transportation underground that was safe and clean too.

The following day 25 of us toured Milan visiting all of the iconic places including the Duomo with the 91 stairs required to get to the Terrace at the top of this fabulous structure, the incredibly elegant Galleria Vittorio Emanuele Shopping Arcade, and the famous Leonardo da Vinci Last Supper painting, considered one of the most significant works of art in history.

That same evening, we had a fun cooking ‘demonstration’ more so than an actual cooking class with pizza, risotto and gelato along with some local red wine. I think everyone enjoyed the team spirit and the ‘different’ evening, hopefully.

Following our time in Milan, we moved on to Lake Como. This particular place has been on my bucket list for a while and although the weather was a little cooler and marginally rainy, we were very fortunate to enjoy a walking tour, a cruise on the lake and a ride on the funicular to enjoy a fabulous view of the area.

After our 3 nights in Lake Como, we made our way to Lake Lucerne via the magnificent Swiss Alps, including a brief visit to St. Moritz – the very exclusive ski resort in Switzerland that’s been open since the 19th century.

The Swiss Alps were stunning, and we had such a lovely day for our drive. We didn’t have a lot of time there but then it was also a Sunday so that most of the shops were closed, which was probably a good thing (lol), but we did all have a lovely lunch.

We were absolutely thrilled to get to Lake Lucerne and stayed at a beautiful, historical 5-star hotel called The Schweizerhof Hotel. The hotel was originally built in 1845 and was wonderful. The staff here were great, and the rooms were very luxurious. Lake Lucerne was part of my changed custom pre-tour with AmaWaterways Rhine River Cruise and I’m so happy we included Lake Lucerne. It was an absolutely delightful 2-night stay and everyone enjoyed it thoroughly. It helped that the weather was also perfect!

We had a very interesting walking tour of Lucerne and then plenty of free time with many enjoying a boat cruise on Lake Lucerne, while others wandered, shopped and some even went to Mount Pilatus for a visit with fantastic views of the city and area.

One of the most moving moments for me was the day of our departure when we visited the famous lion monument in Lucerne commemorating the Swiss Guards who died in the French Revolution in 1792. Our guide, Mei shared the story with us in such a compelling way as to make me feel very sad for this lovely lion and I suppose it also reminded me of my sweet Alex, a Great Pyrenees, who often reminds me of a majestic lion too. I’ve also always been partial to the big cats such as lions in Africa too. I was very interested to also hear that Mark Twain considered this piece as ‘the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world’.

After leaving this incredible stone sculpture, we moved on to Basel, Switzerland to embark our river cruise ship. Prior to embarking, we had a brief morning walking tour and then had free time for lunch. Basel was also an interesting town and again we were so fortunate to have great weather for touring.

Of course, now we’re on board our lovely AmaWaterways 'AmaSerena' river cruise about to depart for Strasbourg, France this evening. So far things are amazing and again, we’ve been very fortunate with the weather, and it’s been so great getting to know our group even better. Such a wonderful way to get to know people while traveling together. So much more to come as we’ve only just begun the river cruise.