After arriving very early on at the Frankfurt airport after a red-eye flight, we caught the transfer (1.5 hrs) to the pier for our river cruise. Wurzburg. 
What a fabulous new ship from Tauck! This is my first river cruise, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience! 
I love the nearness to shore, and being around the other riverboats (or should I say “ships” in honour of the captains – apparently, they wince when they hear their vessels called “boats” – a boat can ride on a ship, but not vice versa, as one guide told me today.)
I’ll write more about the river cruise experience later…. but in this post, I want to focus on a Tauck difference. And that is something they do to ensure clients truly experience a destination.
After completing our initial training module for the Tauck travel agent academy that I am on, we departed the ship by coach to taste some local wines at the city’s Residenz Palace. Just wow. 
The Residenz Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was originally built by two prince-archbishops in the 18th century.
We had wine tasting at the residence wine cellar, and got to tour the basement wine cellar a bit. It was fabulous. I felt like I was in the catacombs of Rome again.
The staff organized a sampling room for us, and also lit 450 candles in the underground tunnels.
We tried a number of wines: Frizzi Secco sparkling wine, 2013 Radersackerer Marsberg Silvaner ERSTE LAGE dry, 2012 Wurzburger Innere Leiste Riesling Spatlese, and a 2012 Wurzburger Stein Rieslaner Auslese.
Fortunately, we were brought bread and water in between samplings, because no one wanted to leave any samples in the glass. The wines were wonderful!
And we got to hear a guest lecturer not only tell us the history of the palace, the history of the region, and all about the wines we were tasting, but we also got to hear some terrific anecdotes. 
(The former actuary in me was most impressed that the area’s life expectancy is almost 90 years of age – that sounds like an astonishing nod to the restorative powers of the wine!)
Apparently, other tour companies bring you to the Palace, and tour you around upstairs – but Tauck is the only company that brings you to the basement and the wine cellar for the tastings.
That’s the Tauck difference, and why their motto is “how you see the world matters” – how different and lesser my experience of viewing the Palace would have been without that experience.
Let me know if I can get you on a Tauck trip!
Sheila Gallant-Halloran
613-837-0699