Heidelberg Archives - Traveling Huntleys

Last Updated: May 2026

Some trips stay with you for years. The river cruise Sandy and I took aboard Uniworld’s River Duchess — from Amsterdam to Bucharest — is firmly in that category. Over three weeks we sailed through eight countries along three connected waterways: the Rhine through Germany’s most celebrated wine valleys and cathedral towns, the Main through Franconia’s medieval heartland, and then the Danube itself — broad and green through Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, growing quieter and wilder the further east we traveled.

We wrote a dedicated post for every stop on the journey. This is the post that connects them all — a stop-by-stop account of twenty-one destinations in the order we visited them. If you are researching a similar cruise or simply want to revisit the journey with us, the links below will take you to each full story.

Michael Huntley, lunch, Bucharest, Romania

[Read more…]

Last Updated: May 2026

Heidelberg is one of those places that immediately justifies every superlative — a city of extraordinary depth where Germany’s oldest university, a dramatically ruined Renaissance castle, a storied medieval bridge, and a beautifully preserved Baroque old town all come together along the banks of the Neckar River. We arrived from Rüdesheim by continuing upriver on the Rhine to the Main River, docking in Frankfurt before taking a bus south to Heidelberg. Sandy and I had read about this city for years, and it exceeded everything we anticipated — the castle alone would justify the detour, but Heidelberg keeps delivering at every turn. First mentioned in 1196 with origins reaching back to Roman and Celtic settlements, the city’s medieval foundation is centered around the iconic Heidelberg Castle and the Church of the Holy Spirit, while centuries of academic life and Romantic-era poetry have layered it with a richness few German cities can match.

Neckar River valley from Heidelberg, Germany

[Read more…]