Bad Essen (Germany Lower Saxony)

Bad Essen is a Hunte RIver (Weser River) cruise port, a small spa resort town and municipality in Germany's Lower Saxony state (Niedersachsen's Landkreis Osnabruck/district), with municipal population around 15,000 and urban population around 3,500. Bad Essen's historical downtown is on Deutsche Fachwerkstrasse (German Half-Timbered Road - running north-south tourist route from Elbe River to Schwarzwald/Black Forest and Bodensee/Lake Constance).

Hunte River has length 189 km (117 mi) and is one of Weser River's tributaries. Hunte flows mainly through boglands and marshlands. Deutsche Fachwerkstrasse has length approx 3000 km (1860 mi) and is divided into 7x sections (by the states it passes through: Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse, Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg) and runs along 5x rivers (Elbe, Weser, Lahn, Rhine, Neckar).

Bad Essen was officially designated as a spa town (bath) in 1902. Into the 1972-formed district (Landkreis Osnabruck) Bad Essen was incorporated together with 16 other municipalities. Town's best-known tourist attractions include downtown's numerous perfectly preserved half-timbered buildings, Schloss Hunnefeld (15th-century castle, now functioning as a private museum), Schloss Ippenburg (19th-century castle with garden exhibitions held here annually), Wittlage Abbey (14th-century castle ruins), Dinosaurierfahrten von Barkhausen (dinosaur tracks found in a former quarry located near Barkhausen an der Hunte), St-Nikolai Kirche (17th-century church), the still-functioning historic watermill (town's landmark, occasionally used for demonstrations).

As cruise port, Bad Essen was added in the 2021 schedule of the ship Katharina von Bora (2000-built). The riverboat is owned by Mystic Cruises and operated via the subsidiary company and travel brand Nicko Cruises (fleet). Next table shows the 7-day cruisetour itinerary from Potsdam to Munster.

Prices started from EUR 1640 (USD 1950) per person with double occupancy