Sigh… adjusting to real life is always so hard. There is no one around to pick up my towels. Food does not magically appear on the table. There is no one ready to serve me drinks… This sucks!
So how was the trip? I think out-of-this-world is an apt definition. I am teetering on the brink of labelling it “The Best Vacation Ever” but I think that’s still part of the vacation-buzz talking since I had SUCH a good time and JUST got home. Time will tell, but I can tell you already that this will NOT be the last River Cruise we take!
It was the hottest April in Germany on record, so we did not have appropriate clothes – that part was less fun! We needed shorts and tank-tops. It was THAT HOT. The water is so low in the Rhine now, that the next few cruises are iffy! Did we ever luck out!! Thank God. I rather have a too-hot river cruise then an "surprise" coach trip when you wanted to sail!
AMSTERDAM
What’s not to love about Amsterdam? It’s such a unique place to visit!
This was our second time, and we packed our days with activities. Essentially, we wanted to complete the list of things we didn’t do last time, but because the weather lent itself to being outdoors all day, we didn’t take time to visit any Art Galleries and didn’t do a lot of indoor –things. I don’t mind, now we have a list of things to do for next time! (if it rains)
I barely remember what we did food-wise last time, but this time I had my mind set on having more local dishes, even if they are touristy: Like Pancakes.
I think the The Pancake Bakery was all tourists; I suspect there is a write-up in all Travel Guides (it was featured in both my guides, that’s how we found it) but who cares! It was packed with HAPPY tourists eating an original local TASTY meal. It was so good, I broke my cardinal rule of no restaurant-repeats on vacation and we went twice!
HAARLEM
I first heard about Haarlem from Rick Steves. He RAVES about it and his opinion was supported by the write-up in my Lonely Planet guide. They both said that Haarlem is so charming that we could easily decide to make it the home-base and Amsterdam would be the place to visit. (They are about 15 minutes apart by train).
I disagree. It was nice but for me: too small to be a home base. I prefer Big Cities to settle in to and like small cities for day trips and lunch-stops.
Plus, there was a market set up in the Main Square so taking a decent shop of the Church, Town Hall or Cafés was impossible. Annoying.
The highlight of Haarlem was the Organ in St Bavo church. It’s reputed to be one of the finest in Europe and it really is breath-taking. Pictures just can’t do it justice.
CRUISING - OUR SHIP
It was so fantastic, I don’t know where to begin!!!
When we finally found the ship, the first thing that struck me was how LONG it was! It was insane! Longer then a football field!! (you can see all the pictures in Picasa / click on the VACATION PICTURES link at the top of the page)
If you’ve read my previous entries about this cruise, you might remember that our cabin was on the lower deck, meaning we had only half a window instead of full sliding doors… but for about a THOUSAND dollars less. All the cabins were the same size anyway, and having a view along the waterline is fun too! One day a swan passed by and peeked in our window, but we didn’t get the camera out in time.
I don’t know if I could recommend this to a very light sleeper however, because it’s not a silent night. Depending on where your cabin is in proximity to the back of the ship, regardless of which deck, the engine noise could keep you up. That, plus the rushing of the water if you are lower down might be challenging if you are not the kind of person that can sleep anywhere. For us it was not a problem because it all became white noise, but some people had trouble.
The only thing what ever woke me up (twice) was the lateral shaking when we entered a lock. Don’t know if we actually hit the sides, or if it was just because of the water rushing in… but those locks were SO NARROW! And FAST! amazing.
Many people with whom I spoke to who have done Ocean Cruises say that you can’t compare the two. My take on it is that those behemoth 3000 passenger cruise-ships are the destination. On a River Cruise, you don’t just see the sea; you see the “sea”-nery. I would still like to try an Ocean Cruise someday, but I suspect that I will end up preferring the River Cruise experience much more!
FOOD & EATING ON BOARD
Remember what I read about the food? that it was: European-style food adjusted for North American tastes. Well, I found no evidence of that. The food was good and THANK GOD the portions were reasonable!
No humongous plates dripping over with food – it was quality over quantity!
Breakfast was a hot buffet served in the Dining Room, plus you could order eggs (any style, including Benedict and Omelettes). It started at 7AM, but if you were hungry before that, you could get pastries at the “Coffee Station”.
I am annoyed we didn’t take ANY pictures!! stupid.
Lunch (in the Dining Room) was a Salad & Sandwich Bar, plus if that was not enough, you had a choice of soup and a la carte warm meals too. On occasion, they also served a “Café Lunch” in the Lounge – things like pizza. And once we had a GREAT casual German-Food lunch on the Sun Deck while we sailed though the portion of the Rhine dotted with German Castles. It was a FABULOUS afternoon! (I wonder if anyone skipped it in favour of the lunch served in the Dining Room? – if so, they TOTALLY missed out!)
In the afternoon, at the “Coffee Station” there was fruit, cookies and muffins readily available.
Dinner was 5 courses, but you were not obligated to eat them ALL! HA HA
- Hot appetizer (sometimes a choice between 2 options which made it difficult because they were both tempting!)
- Soup (which I often skipped)
- Main dish, usually a choice between a meat dish and a fish dish – always delicious!
- Desert, which I skipped every time except for the Baked Alaska on the last day. I’ve never had it before and I hear it’s a cruising tradition. Now I know I don’t care for baked Alaska.
- Cheese Plate which you can imagine I NEVER SKIPPED!!
As far as drinks went, they offered an all-you-can-drink package for 150€ each which in my opinion was misleading because both people had to sign up. That means we had to figure out if we would spend 300€ in drinks over 7 days, which was about 3-5 drinks per day each. It’s kind of borderline depending on who you travel with. If I was travelling with my girlfriends, we’d be partaking in cocktails enough to make it worth while, but with my husband, who doesn’t drink that much, it would have been a waste. As it was, our bar bill was less then 100€.
They did serve complimentary wine with dinner, but I didn’t like it at all… actually I hate it… but my husband didn’t mind it. I would therefore buy a glass of Chianti with lunch, and another again with dinner and maybe the occasional drink or digestif here and there.
AND I DIDN’T REALLY NEED MY DRESSY PANTS! my dark jeans would have been enough. Dressy Casual meant: no shorts and flip flops. Amazing how people need to be told this!
FELLOW PASSENGERS
I already suspected that I would be outside the demographic of the majority of our fellow travellers and I was right.
Aside from a child travelling with her mom, I suspect I was the youngest person on board and I think basically it’s because cruising appeals mostly to retired people or people with reduced mobility who can’t endure the pace of a bus tour. It’s really geared to seniors overall.
The nationalities on board were the same as on most bus tours I’ve been on: Mostly American, Aussies and Kiwis, a sprinkling of Canadians and the odd miscellaneous nationality here and there.
I don’t know how it happened, but we made friends right away. Surprising for me because I HAAAAAATE the inane small talk of “where are you from”… more specifically the crap that follows.
It never just goes like this:
A: So where are you from?
B: City 123, you?
A: City 456.
B: Nice, are you enjoying the cruise?
It more often goes like this:
A: So where are you from?
B: City 123, you?
A: City 456, but I grew up here _______ and I went to school here _____ and my parents worked here ______ but then in 1962 we had to blah blah because yada yada.
At this point in the non-conversation, I glaze over and wonder if I look as uninterested as I feel.
It’s a TOTALLY legit question to ask someone, but I noticed in my travels that this is what most Americans seem to have in common (Canadians too probably, but I don’t come across them as much). They LOVE spilling their life story when all you have said to them was hello. It’s like asking you where you are from is an excuse for them to tell yet another person all about themselves.
I am way more private then that. I prefer people who mind their own business until we become friends (or at least friendly) and then it’s much more fitting to fill in the details of your life because it’s coming up in the conversation naturally… Does that make sense to you?
Another risk is if you bump into someone from your home town, then all you do is talk about home. I am on vacation!!! I want to FORGET about home!!! This happened to us when we met a woman who used to live in the municipality we live in now as a child. I tuned her out almost immediately, but my husband is nicer then I am, and he chatted with her for a while.
I can HONESTLY tell you that I do not remember meeting the friends we made on board, but it obviously went well since I was interested enough to talk to them beyond the obligatory “so, where are you from?”
The most logical way we must have met was that we sat together at dinner on the first night. My husband and I probably sat at a table for 6 and were soon joined by 2 other couples: Mr & Mrs Indiana and Mr & Mrs Hawaii.
We clicked from the start. I think it must have been 2 days later at the most when Mr & Mrs New York joined us and the 8 of us were together after that.
We had the perfect set-up in my opinion because during the day we were on our own, so there was never a third wheel and no one was intruding on anyone else’s vacation, but we had drinks and dinner and after-dinner cocktails together every night. It was great – like going out for dinner with good friends every day. And not a dinner went by where we didn’t all have a good belly-laugh at some point. We had a fantastic time with them!
The synergy between the 8 of us was so good, that we all agreed it improved our cruise experience. I thought it worked out so well that I think if I ever go on another River Cruise, not having them around would mean I would not have as much fun.
We really truly enjoyed each other’s company.
KINDERDIJK
Our first shore excursion was to Kinderdijk to visit windmills. I didn’t think much of it really… It was nice I guess. Meh. Whatever.
COLOGNE
We got our hopes up too soon. Off the boat we were PSYCHED! It looked like it was going to be the kind of day where you run out of time before seeing it all! But it turns out that Cologne is more of a Museum Town then a “Look At The Awesome Thing or Building Over There!!” kind of town, and we felt the weather was too nice to be indoors so we skipped the museums.
I also switched gears then, and adjusted my expectations for future excursions. I set my mind to expect stops that would be more loungey, and relaxing, and stroll-around, and stop-for-a-drink, and visit-the-church kind of stops instead of check-a-bunch-of-things-off-the-list stops. It made it all better.
A lot of the city was under construction too because they are building a metro, so the main draw was the Kölner Dom (Cathedral). It really was amazing! This is the kind of building where you need a extra wide angled lens to capture it all in one frame.
KOBLENZ
What a teeeeeeeeeeease! I’ve wanted to visit the Deutches Eck for years, but we just sailed past it. Still, it was very nice!
MARKSBURG CASTLE
Very nice, but I thought the best part were the views from up there.
Castle interiors… meh, “seen one seem ‘em all”!
UPPER MIDDLE RHINE VALLEY
Also known as the Rhine Gorge, it was great. The weather was perfect and as mentioned above we had great German food and complementary German beer while we enjoyed the view. (complete with interesting commentary)
Mr Hawaii and I were psyched because this day was what made us book the tour in the first place!
We were both surprised that the castles were so spread out, we expected them to be a little closer together, but I suppose it makes sense that they are somewhat spread apart when you think about their purpose!
I think it was the nicest day of the entire trip.
RÜDESHEIM
A nice little town, but it was SO DAMNED HOT we didn’t care anymore! We just whizzed through it and ran back to the boat to shower and have drinks in the temperature controlled Lounge! Looked like it would have been a very nice place to have dinner. Ah well.
HEIDELBERG
A truly great lunch-stop city. Lots of nice THINGS to see; not just museums so if you want to have a outside-day, you won’t miss out. A nice (albeit crumbling) Castle, a huge Cathedral, an Old Bridge, a nice and loooong Main Street, beautiful old buildings, and a Main Square perfect for stopping to eat. In fact, I had a SCRUMPTIOUS Wiener Schnitzel there. It’s definitely a good camera stop and well worth adding to your itinerary!
SPEYER
My husband passed on this city, it was after we got back to the from Heidelberg and he was too hot and wanted to relax so I was on my own.
Small yet pretty, I would not say it’s a lunch-stop city, perhaps more of a coffee-stop city, but if you are near by anyway I think it’s worth a small detour to see the few sights.
STRASBOURG
Now THIS was our kind of city. THIS is the kind of city we can use as a home base and take a few days exploring. It was our favourite stop.
It reminded us a lot of Bruges in places and we really wished we had more time (and cooler temps) to explore it further.
It’ll be on our list for the next time we are ever in that part of the world!
We also hooked up for lunch with Mr & Mrs Indiana and Mr & Mrs Hawaii who wanted to stick to us since we speak French! HA HA. I didn’t mind at all, but thought it wasn’t really necessary since we were in such a touristy place everyone speaks English! Turns out I was wrong! the waitress didn’t speak English so I did have to translate after all. (Mrs and Mrs New York didn’t join us, they went to mass since it was Good Friday)
Isn’t this a nice picture of us?
It was a nice lunch, the menu looked good from the outside, but the inside was not as “polished”as I hoped it would be so I was a little disappointed. I wanted something a little fancier, but who cares! We enjoyed ourselves with our friends and had a chance to try a local speciality: Tarte Flambée
Looking forward to going back one day!
BLACK FOREST
Not even worth mentioning in my opinion. The scenery is just as nice in Switzerland, if not nicer and it was a excursion to lead us to a fabricated souvenir village anyway. Not that impressed.
So there you have it! 
Would I do it again? YES!!! in a heart beat! You would not need to ask me twice!
So schön!! This is in my future too... hopefully!
ReplyDeleteWhile I wouldn't be interested in that tour, the long boat tour experience looks sooo nice. I thought so as soon as you told me about it ages ago, so I'm also glad it wasn't disappointing! It always looked nicer than a bus tour, or a cruise.
ReplyDeleteA cruise holds no appeal for me. Just sit on a big germ ridden ship and stare at the ocean? And there's all these awful "activities" where they just try to sell you crap? Ugh. No, not for me. This boating thing seems like a lovely floating hotel instead... ahhhh...
I still think it looks like you visited a series a ghost towns.