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Marvelous Marquette

It’s been a few years since we’ve been to Marquette in Michigan’s upper peninsula. I guess we didn’t quite realize how much we missed it. The small college town charm, Lake Superior at your doorstep, beautiful bike trails and being immersed in nature, immediately reminded us that this is one of our favorite Michigan destinations. Once again, we enjoyed staying at the nicely maintained Marriott Fairfield Inn during the last week of August. To break up the drive we stayed a night in Petoskey both on the way there and back.

Our timing happened to span Northern Michigan University’s move-in weekend and a 3-day music festival in Marquette’s waterfront, Lower Harbor Park. 

Downtown Marquette, view on Washington St. looking towards Lake Superior
View from our Marriott Fairfield room looking onto Lake Superior
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Holland & Belgium (post Elbe River Cruise) – June 2025

After the Viking Cruise, we traveled by plane to The Hague (South Holland in the Netherlands), and spent a few days there, then traveled by train to Ghent, Belgium.  This was Karen’s dream- to be able to bike through Belgium and enjoy the beautiful sites!

We stayed at the Marriott in The Hague, which happened to be right next to the site of a big NATO conference two days after we left. But the security was already beginning to impact our movement in and out of the hotel. However, we were still able to enjoy the bikes provided by Marriott with our proximity to  the North Sea, The Hague, and Delft. The neighborhoods (including Embassy residences) were very nice near our hotel also.

The highlights of our stay in The Hague had to be riding the beautiful bike path along the North Sea and our ride to Delft (one of our favorite cities).

View from our Marriott Hotel window overlooking The Hague and the North Sea
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Viking Elbe River Cruise – June 2025

The Elbe River Cruise, in June of 2025, marked DaK’s sixth Viking Cruise. Although it was still very enjoyable it was our least favorite Viking experience. The reason came down to how many times we had to pack and unpack during our 10 day Viking trip. We had 2 nights in a Berlin hotel, then 3 days on the Viking Astrid, then 3 days on the Viking Beyla (due to bridge construction blocking the Elbe causing us to “ship swap” to the Viking Beyla for 3 days), then 2 days in a Prague hotel. It is so nice when you can just walk off a ship and see many different places while all of your belongings stay in one place (on the ship).

There are only two small Viking ships on the Elbe (1 each direction) which only hold 98 passengers each, due to extreme water levels (at times 3 feet or less in some spots). In fact we were very lucky to have some heavy rain the week before our cruise that raised the river level enough to avoid being bussed along the route. Our itinerary consistested of 2 days in Berlin (including a day trip to Potsdam), Wittenberg, Meissen, Dresden, Saxon Switzerland (Germany)/Bad Schandau, Decin (Czechia), and 2 days in Prague. There really weren’t any bad stops as they all had something to offer.

The iconic Berlin Wall
There was still a fair amount of the wall left standing
First order of business - find good beer. Paulaner fit the bill, just steps from our hotel. Ate there both Munich nights.
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3 Days in Bavaria (pre-Elbe River Cruise) – June 2025

Before we started our Viking Cruise, we decided to spend a few days in Munich.  One of our favorite places to bike.  We had so much fun exploring the English Gardens and the city streets.  We had even more fun hopping on a train and heading to Mittenwald, one of the most beautiful towns in the world!  Once again, we stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn hotel and found the amenities suitable with easy access to the Munich East train station.

Munich, Germany
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Hilton Head and Kiawah Island, SC.

We decided to switch it up a bit this year as we abandoned our four year run at Jekyll Island for extended stays at Hilton Head Island and Kiawah Island, S.C. 

As it turned out, this was the coldest and snowiest winter we’ve had in the past four years making travel very tricky. Watching the weather closely, we literally had no margin for error on both the way there and back. Snow, ice, extreme polar vortexes, and even floods frequented the route between Michigan and South Carolina. As a result, our warm weather days were also lessened as the cold and snow penetrated all the way down to southern Georgia for a couple of days. Hilton Head even experienced “once in a generation” snow accumulations for a few days.

The Marriott Surf Watch Vacation Club was our home for a month. Our ~2000 sq. ft. condo was very spacious and easy to settle into, as many conveniences (even our own washer and dryer) were included in the 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo. There were 4 pools (one indoors), a nice workout facility, an ocean front beach, and activities (e.g. daily water aerobics, food, music, and other social events) almost every day. It was a very vice home away from home.

View from living room
Looking North, down the beach in front of our condo
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Mackinac Island Revisited

On September 29th DaK finally made it back to The Inn at Stonecliffe. The first time we stayed at the Inn (several years ago, after a Zoo-de-Mac 50 mile bike ride) it was in a gradual decline from it’s original opening in 1904. But we were drawn to the isolation of the Inn’s location higher up on the island away from the crowds on Main Street and it had a sort of historic charm to it.

However, this time the Inn at Stonecliffe has  been restored to it’s original glory after a $10M renovation by the Pulte Corporation. The results were spectacular and we were so happy that we decided to revisit the restored historic Inn.

Shepler's Ferry to Mackinac Island
A Viking Cruise Ship anchored near Mackinac Island
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