Christianity Along the Rhine: A Travel Blog Series

My wife and I just got back last week from a 12-day trip to Europe, and I am excited to blog about it.

The main focus of the trip was a week-long Viking river cruise along the Rhine and Moselle Rivers, starting in Basel, Switzerland and ending up in Trier, Germany. The river cruise was bookended with a two-night stay in Zurich, Switzerland on the leading end, with a two-night stay in Paris, France on the final end. For a church history enthusiast like myself, it was an amazing experience.

Veracity blogger above the Rhine River, in Basel, Switzerland.  October, 2025.

Over the next few months, and into the New Year, I will be periodically releasing blog installments covering different elements from our tour along the Rhine River, with highlights both before and after (SEE INDEX OF INDIVIDUAL BLOG POSTS BELOW!).  As usual, I got some book reading done before and during the trip, and I will be narrating those book reviews as I share some photos of the experience.  The land we traveled through during our trip is incredibly rich with church history (and history in general).

This is not the first time I have put together a travel blog series on Veracity. I got inspired to do this from some of the trips our Veracity blog founder, John Paine, took several times to Canada (in Toronto) and England (to see Codex Sinaiticus at the British Museum in London) a few years ago.  Thanks, John.  I am blaming you for all of these blog posts!!  😉

The newly restored Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, France. The fire in 2019 did a lot of damage, but the structure of building remained sound.  The restoration effort was impressive, as the inside of Notre Dame is much brighter than before. Centuries of candle smoke had darkened the Cathedral, but now it is a most glorious sight!!

Back in 2018, my wife and I spent 2 1/2 weeks in Rome, Italy, which still stands out to me as the best trip of all. I could have spent a whole month there and not seen everything. We had saved up for years to make this trip, and it was fantastic. It was a lot of fun to meet up in Rome for a full day with our friends Marie Knapp, and her (now) late husband Troy Knapp.

In October 2022, we took another river cruise, but this time down the Danube River, from Regensburg, Germany to Budapest, Hungary.  This was part of a full three-week tour of six European countries, to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We were able to spend a few days earlier in Munich, and then after the Danube, a few extra days in Prague, followed by a few other days in Italy/Sicily.

For Christmas 2023, we were invited by our friends, Shannon and Andrew Bodine, to visit in Brussels, Belgium. After seeing the Christmas markets and Waterloo battlefield, we got on a train to cross the English Channel to make our way to Cambridge, England, where we met up with other friends, Jon and Meredith Thompson, who just happened to be in Cambridge for a few weeks while we were in the area. Pretty cool!

This recent trip along the Rhine River was special, and particularly enjoyable, as during the last two prior trips I got sick, which was not terribly fun. But this time, no Covid and no flu!! Yeah! …. The only downside to this recent trip was that there was constant activity, and not a lot of downtime. I need a vacation from my vacation!

Marksburg Castle, above the Rhine River, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The castle first dates back to the early 12th century, but had been damaged some over the years, most recently by American artillery during World War II.

I have to say that Viking has figured out how to do river cruises. They have had ads all over the PBS television network for decades, and we got to see for ourselves the famous section along the Rhine where all of the castles are featured in those ads.

The food was fantastic. We had excellent tour guides, even though the walking element on all of those cobblestone streets was very challenging for my wife. Going through the river locks appealed to my nerdy engineering side. I highly recommend doing something like this if you have the chance.

The first couple of blog posts in this series will be about the 16th-century Protestant Reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, of Zurich, Switzerland, who has become largely forgotten among Christians today, despite his enormous impact on Christian theology. I will keep a running tab and index of blog posts updated here at the bottom of this post, as reference.

Enjoy!

A cable car ride over the Rhine River, with our Viking longship below. Koblenz, Germany.

Heidelberg, Germany. Looking up towards the castle.

The town of Cochem, Germany, along the Moselle River.

Here is a reference list to previous travel blog post series, along with a list of posts to the current series…..

First, from Rome…………

• The Legacy of “Christian” Anti-Semitism: A Report from Rome
• A Fake-News Jesus? Why “Jesus Myth-ers” Should Take a Trip to Rome … (for Christmas)

Next, from Christianity along the Danube, with some time in southern Germany, along the Alps, and over to Prague, as well…….

• Oberammergau – The Passion Play
• Prague’s Jan Hus: The Reformation Before Luther
• Defenestration of Prague & The Thirty Years War
• The Stain of Antisemitism in “Christian” Europe
• Europe’s Grand Cathedrals…. To the Glory of God
• Dan Jones: Powers and Thrones, a New History of the Middle Ages
• Christendom Under the Habsburgs in Vienna
• Regensburg: The 16th Century “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” … (That Failed)
• Culture Clash: Christian, Secular and Soviet Influences In Eastern Europe
• Sicily: From the Greek Classical World to Christendom

Before our recent trip down the Rhine River, over Christmas of 2023, we went to Belgium and Cambridge, England….

• Napoleon’s Waterloo
• Simon Gathercole in Cambridge
• Ridley Hall and Tyndale House in Cambridge
• Ypres and Dunkirk
• Bruges and Ghent, Belgium
• A Tour of Cambridge England

Coming soon….. Christianity Along the Rhine…..

• Zwingli in Zurich (Part One) God’s Armed Prophet:  A look at Switzerland’s most fiery Reformed Protestant preacher.
• Zwingli in Zurich (Part Two) A Parallel to Charlie Kirk?:  A look at Switzerland’s most fiery Reformed Protestant preacher. What can the life of Zwingli teach us about assassination of Charlie Kirk?
• Was Winston Churchill a Warmonger?? (And Other Lunacy in the “New Media”):  Some now think that Churchill was the villain of World War 2. I protest such historical revisionism…… also some photos of a visit to the American cemetery in Luxembourg, where the bodies of thousands of Americans are buried, most notably from the Battle of the Buldge.

…. more posts to come!!