Wendy and I are thrilled to announce our next riverboat cruise:

We’ll be cruising the Rhine River from Amsterdam to Basal, December 5th to the 13th, 2020!

We’ll board the AmaMora in Amsterdam, a city of many beautiful canals, and cruise through a number of them before beginning our trip down the Rhine.

Our next stop will be Cologne, Germany, where we’ll visit one of Germany’s most renowned Christmas markets located in front of the Gothic Cologne Cathedral.

From there we’ll cruise through the castle-laden Rhine River Gorge. There will be opportunities to visit delightful markets in the towns of Rüdesheim, Heidelberg, Speyer, Riquewihr and Freiburg.

Our riverboat will also take us to Strasbourg, France, where the Christkindelsmärik dates back to 1570. This makes it the oldest Christmas Market in France.

Our final stop will be Basal, Switzerland another city of great beauty in yet another country and yes, the Christmas markets are here too!

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. But remember – these trips fill fast and we only have a short window of time to fill the cabins we have reserved, before AMAWaterways will take them back – because they know this cruise will fill!

If you have any questions you’re welcome to email me at .

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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!