VIRGILIO TRAVEL
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DETAILED ITINERARY
(Subject to Change)
Thursday,
May 6
Depart the United States. Our pilgrimage begins with an overnight flight to Switzerland. The group flight — the one those purchasing the air add-on will be flying on — departs New York-Newark on United 134 at 6:05 PM and arrives in Zurich at 8:15 the next morning.
Friday,
May 7
ZURICH · EINSIEDELN · LUCERNE
We land in Zurich and gather in the Arrivals Hall at 9:00 AM, where Lino, Fr. Dave, Tyler and Brett will be waiting. The buses are standing by, and our first meal together is a three-course lunch at a local restaurant.
Then onto Einsiedeln. For a eight hundred years people have come here on pilgrimage. We celebrate Mass there on our very first day.
We come down out of the hills to Lucerne, where the lake sits under the Alps and the whole town looks like it's showing off. Check into the Hotel Astoria, then dinner with a Swiss folk show — three courses, wine or beer, and lots of fun. Then a bed, on solid ground, before we go to the river.
Saturday,
May 8
LUCERNE · BASEL — AND WE BOARD
This morning we see medieval Lucerne on foot: the fourteenth-century Chapel Bridge and its Water Tower, the Spreuer Bridge, the Jesuit and Franciscan churches, the town hall and the old city walls. We also visit the Lion Monument, a dying lion thirty feet long carved directly into a cliff face, which Mark Twain called "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world." Mass at a local church, then free time for lunch and to stroll the city.
In the afternoon we drive to Basel and board the AMADEUS Queen — every cabin on this ship is ours. We have a welcome cocktail and get to know each other as the boat departs for Strasbourg in the early evening. We sit down to our welcome dinner as Switzerland turns into France.
Sunday,
May 9
STRASBOURG, FRANCE
You went to bed in Switzerland and you wake up in France, which never stops being a little bit magic. Open the window and the country has changed!
The morning is a canal cruise through the heart of Strasbourg, from the half-timbered tanners' houses of Petite France out to the modern European Quarter — a city built around its water, seen the way it was meant to be seen. After lunch, we have a guided tour on foot.
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We go inside Strasbourg Cathedral, a Gothic masterpiece of rose-pink sandstone, and see its astronomical clock: a Renaissance case from 1574 running a mechanism that has gone through its parade of figures every day since 1842. Then the old centre — the Maison Kammerzell, Place Gutenberg, St Thomas' Church, the tanners' quarter and the covered bridges. Mass at a local church before dinner aboard. We sail for Speyer late in the evening.
Monday,
May 10
SPEYER · HEIDELBERG
We arrive in Speyer and begin our day with a guided visit to its Cathedral — a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a thousand years old, and the largest Romanesque church still standing anywhere in the world. Eight emperors and kings, three empresses and more than forty bishops are buried in the crypt. We celebrate Mass there.
Back aboard for lunch while the ship moves downriver to Mannheim, then by coach to Heidelberg: a guided tour of the old city in the Neckar valley, the view from the Old Bridge, and the cable car up to Heidelberg Castle. Inside the red sandstone palace you'll find the Great Tun, a wine barrel holding some fifty-eight thousand gallons and famed as the largest in the world, with a staircase up to a platform on top said to have served as a dance floor. Dinner back aboard, with regional wine included as it is at every lunch and dinner this week.
Tuesday,
May 11
RÜDESHEIM · THE RHINE GORGE · KOBLENZ
We're back aboard for lunch, and then comes the afternoon you'll always remember. The ship threads the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, a UNESCO-listed stretch with around forty castles along forty miles of river, vineyards running down to the waterline, and the Lorelei rock rising on the right at the narrowest point of the whole Middle Rhine. Find a chair on the sun deck and watch it go by. We reach Koblenz later in the day with time to walk one of Germany's oldest cities before dinner aboard.
The day starts with Mass at the Church of St Hildegard. Afterwards, we do a tasting of three local wines at a vineyard above Rüdesheim. Then a visit to the Drosselgasse — a hundred and fifty yards of cobbled lane packed with wine taverns, garden restaurants and live music.
Wednesday,
May 12
COCHEM, ON THE MOSELLE
We leave Koblenz this morning and turn off the Rhine onto the Moselle — narrower, greener, and planted with some of the steepest vineyards in the world. The morning is yours as we cruise along and spend time together. Lunch aboard and Mass at a local church, then up to Reichsburg Castle, which stands on a rock three hundred feet above the town and is straight from a fairytale. It's a steep walk, but paved the whole way with no steps, up through Cochem's old market square and along Schlossstraße — and the view back over the Moselle from the top is worth every bit of it.
We finish the day at a family winery with four Moselle wines and a liqueur made from the red vineyard peach: Cochem calls itself the capital of it, and four out of every five peach trees on the Moselle grow on the slopes around this town. Dinner aboard, and the ship leaves for Cologne in the evening.
Thursday,
May 13
COLOGNE · AN ICE CREAM PARTY ON THE RHINE
We arrive in Cologne in the morning and celebrate Mass at a local church. Then to Cologne Cathedral with a local guide — two spires rising more than five hundred feet over a city that has been here two thousand years, begun in 1248 and not finished until 1880. After the guided explanation there's time to visit the interior on your own, for prayer, to light a candle, and to take it all in.
The ship departs for Amsterdam after lunch, and the afternoon is an ice cream party. Five ice cream stations in the Panorama Lounge with the river going past the glass: every sauce and topping you can think of, fresh fruit, Amaretto, Baileys and Cointreau to pour over the top, and a duo playing live music throughout. If the weather cooperates, we'll move it up to the sun deck. The rest of the day is ours to enjoy. There's the heated pool under its retractable glass roof, the sun deck and Lido bar, shuffleboard and the giant chess board, the River Terrace at the bow, or simply a nap in your cabin with the riverbank sliding past. We then gather together for another great dinner.
Friday,
May 14
AMSTERDAM
Our last full day, and we spend all of it in Amsterdam. The morning is a guided walking tour of the city, and then we celebrate Mass — the last of the pilgrimage. Lunch is on your own, with time after it to explore at your own pace.
In the afternoon we go out on the water, which is where Amsterdam was always meant to be seen from: a canal cruise through the ring of seventeenth-century canals, past the merchant houses with their hoisting beams still hanging from the gables, under bridge after bridge after bridge.
And then our farewell dinner aboard - new friends gathered round tables and the river outside the windows. This is the evening we share memories with each other, have final toasts, and the people at your table that were strangers nine days ago are now friends!
Saturday,
May 15
Sadly, our pilgrimage is over. But with a lifetime of memories and new friendships, we have breakfast aboard, disembark for the last time and head to the airport to say Tot ziens, Amsterdam! The group will fly on United 71, departing at 9:10 AM and arriving in New York-Newark at 11:25 AM.