Monday, October 12, 2015
Note: Google’s Picasa website is having a problem for the past
couple of days. Clay has been able to upload the photos, but it won’t allow him
to share them with the public. Sorry. We’ll keep trying as the Internet comes
and goes and is very slow.
I was up first again around 6:40am. We were at a lightly
attended first hour of breakfast buffet. We are sailing all morning to leave the Main and begin the Rhine and the
Amadeus Club had a Private Function sign up again this morning for the Dutch
group and the Sun Deck was still closed. The good news was that we had full use
of the Panorama Lounge. The ACD held a world travel trivia contest in there
from 10am to about 11:30am. I helped our dining companions and they knew some I
didn’t from the trivia she had held on the other bus the other day. They won
and I was 2nd. Our table blew away the competition. There were no
other honorable mentions. Strange since there were people from all over the
world in that room that were well traveled. Anyway, they gave the winners a
bottle of German Sekt. I got to keep my Amadeus Bic pen! Buffet lunch was
served in Panorama Lounge at 12:30pm. We all moved to a 4-top at the rear of
the lounge in the sun. It has been so cold onboard for the past couple of days.
I am certain that our HVAC doesn’t work properly. No matter how you set it, it
blows cold air. This morning there was no hot water either. I thought it was
just our cabin, but then our dining companions said there’s was only cold too.
Given the general crabbiness of the waitstaff at breakfast, I think they might
have had cold showers too. That or they also got free drinks last night and were
feeling it this morning. We assumed that free drinks was the reason the
passengers were so slow to come out today. We all enjoyed the carbonara at the
pasta station today as well as the Nasi Goreng and the apple crumble cake with vanilla
sauce. They announced during lunch that they were re-opening the sun deck and
that made people very happy though the general consensus seemed to be that it
was too cold now to use it. For the past two or three days, the temperature
range has been 5 to 15C. The sun when it is out is hot though. The leaves are
showing more color every day. I don’t know if I reported it but one of our wine
tasting guides told us that vines with leaves turning yellow make white wine and
vines with leaves turning red make red wine. We’ve seen some with grapes still
on them and it seems correct.
We went through parallel locks this morning with another
river boat. That speeds up transit time! We later shared a double long lock
with that other river boat. That is a long lock!
It is nearly 2pm and we are in a lock. If it is not the last
on the Main, it should be near it. The Dutch guide just made an announcement
and I assume it was too give them a heads up to get ready to get off quickly.
We are expected to arrive in Rudesheim around 4:30pm for a walking tour, with
Rudesheimer coffee (yuck!) and a musical museum tour followed by a bus transfer
to Berghotel Loreley for dinner. We will stay docked overnight in Rudesheim and
have scenic sailing tomorrow morning.
Since it will probably be very late when we get back to the
boat tonight, I will try to post this today. I will write about Rudesheim
tomorrow.
There are lots of comments and asides and jokes by the staff and crew about missing ports and not getting to Amsterdam over the last 2 days. Coupled with the free drinks last night, it does not bode well. We've never cruised this part before and would like to, but I'm still very happy to have made it this far! I'd be happier still to sail into Amsterdam and dock by Central Station to disembark for my train ride to Paris!
