Wendy and I are pleased to announce that our riverboat cruise to the European Christmas Markets has been moved to December 2021! In spite of the pandemic – we are thrilled to have something wonderful to look forward to! Please read on for all the information:

We’ll be cruising the Rhine River from Basal to Amsterdam, December 1st to the 9th, 2021!

We’ll board the AmaMora in Basel, Switzerland, a city commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland!

Basel is known for its historic architecture, many museums and love for the arts. It also has a lovely Christmas market.

Then our first stop along the Rhein will take us to the enchanting Alsatian town of Riquewihr, beautifully dressed in her holiday finery with twinkling decorations and a lively Christmas Market.

Our next stop will be Strasbourg, France, where the Christkindelsmärik dates back to 1570. This makes it the oldest Christmas Market in France.

From there we’ll continue through the Rhine River Gorge with its fabled legends and many castles. There will be opportunities to visit delightful markets in the towns of Rüdesheim, Heidelberg, Speyer, and Freiburg.

Next we’ll discover Cologne, Germany, where we’ll visit one of Germany’s most renowned Christmas markets located in front of the Gothic Cologne Cathedral.

Our final destination will be Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, best known for its iconic canals.

In many of these ports we’ll have the option to take a guided tour of the city/town, but if you’re a bit more adventurous, our ship will have bicycles available for your use in every port. The winters are fairly mild along the river and biking is a fun option. This trip truly has something for everyone!

Visiting the Christmas Markets has been on my bucket list for years and I’m thrilled to have it become a reality. At this time the trip is filled, but if more cabins become available we’d love to have you join us. Please email me at: to be added to our waiting list.

Previous Travels

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This past January, I took a group of quilters and friends to the International Great Quilt Festival in Tokyo, Japan!

We spent two days at the Quilt Festival in the Tokyo Dome (while staying in the attached hotel),

The following quote about the quilt show is from a website called Quiltripping. You may read the enitre post at: https://quiltripping.com/visit-tokyo-international-quilt-festival-even-dont-quilt/.

“The annual Tokyo Great International Quilt Festival presents the works of the best quilters in Japan. This is also the largest quilt show in the world, filling up the whole floor of the Tokyo Dome which is Tokyo’s indoor baseball and special events stadium. Roughly 250,000 Japanese and international visitors check out the quilts and special exhibits over the course of seven days. Apparently, this is the largest attended event in the Tokyo Dome (even beating out baseball).”

And, if experiencing the quilt show wasn’t enough – we spent a night at an Onsen hotel with views of iconic Mount Fuji.

We visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine and saw the magical, seemingly unending path of over 5000 vibrant orange torii gates that wind through the hills behind the Shrine.

And we took classes with Japanese artists in Shibori dyeing, Rocketsu
dyeing (a traditional wax-resist dyeing method),

and we even learned how to make sushi!

It was a wonderful trip. To see more photographs of all the amazing things we saw, please go to my blog and type “Japan” in the “Search” box.

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This past January (2019) Wendy and I sailed around the Hawaiian Islands aboard the Norwegian Pride of America! We had over 40 delightful quilters and traveling companions join us and it was a marvelous trip!