If this is Tuesday it must be Belgium...

and it is. We've spent the last 12 days cruising down the Rhine on the Viking Sun, a comfortable but not luxurious river cruise ship that shuttles between Basel and Antwerp for 10 months of the year. It's turned out to be a good thing to do. The only problem: they charge outrageous amounts for Internet connect time, so I haven't been able to be as conscientious as I'd like about staying in touch. And now it's much too late to give you a blow-by-blow. I'll try to cover some highlights.

The boat holds about 200 passengers and 40 crew. On a typical day we'll wake in or near a historic place and, after a suitable breakfast, board a bus for a guided tour of the sights. We stagger back in time for lunch about 1, and spend the afternoon recovering while we cruise to a new place. The days have often not been exactly like that, but that's the general idea anyway.

So, highlights? A bunch of beautiful and historic towns like Strasbourg or Heidelberg or Rüdesheim. Climbing up to the top of the Marksburg castle - a special treat considering when we left Canada my knee was so bad I couldn't walk a block. The string of 30 or so castles along the Rhine gorge, homes of the original robber barons. The marvellous city of Cologne and its amazing cathedral (home of the bones of the Three Kings, they say), and the way the rest of the city has recovered from being bombed to dust 60 years ago. The green parklands along the shores of most of the Rhine, loud with birdsong and happy campers. Keukenhof park outside of Amsterdam, full of the most unbelievable tulips at this time of year - and the tulip fields we saw on our way there. The 19 ancient windmills of Kinderdijk, and the modern wind farms in windy parts of the Netherlands. The hordes of bicycles everywhere, especially in Amsterdam. The ancient and lovely Belgian city of Bruges, which we visited today. It really is a beautiful and interesting part of the world, and I'm glad we've seen it. When I get a little more reasonably priced Internet connection I'll put some pictures on Flickr and you'll see what I mean.

I've noticed in particular the care the Swiss, Germans, Dutch and Belgians seem to take of their environment. All along the Rhine they're particularly aware of what happens when the water gets a little high, and in the Netherlands they feel particularly vulnerable to global warming. They also know what happens when you really foul your nest - I don't think the Rhine has always been as clean as we saw it, but people swim in it now and there are lots of fish, based on the number of fishermen who seem to think it isn't a waste of time to get a line wet. Gas prices are high here, maybe $2.50 a litre, and yet there are still a lot of cars on the roads - small, fuel-efficient ones. There are also lots of buses and trams. Every city seems to be building or extending its subway system. Public transport is a priority. It's not too expensive and very convenient and reliable. North America has a lot to learn from Europe.

I've also had a lot of fun playing around with different languages. I did German in high school and university but this was the first chance I've had to try to speak it. I felt really dumb when Turkish came out instead of German, but at least our time in Turkey has given me the courage to make a fool of myself in another language. It's nice that most of the people we've met here have spoken passable English, but I like being able to struggle with their language, too, and sometimes it helps when they can't find the word they need in English. I spoke French in Strasbourg, too, and it came surprisingly easily. Dutch is hard to pronounce and harder to understand when it's spoken, but Flemish is really quite nice and comprehensible. After spending a day here I feel qualified to say that Belgium seems like the nicest country of the lot.

Tomorrow morning we leave the ship and move on to Luxembourg on our own. Another country to tick off on our life list!