Day 14 - To Paris and beyond

Thursday, October 15, 2015

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We went to the Dutch Shanty Choir performance last night after dinner. The 4 of us walked in about 10 past 9pm and we were the only people in there for the first 3 songs. I think we all felt bad for them. The thing is that Clay & I were expecting shanty singing which is a Capella and they had 2 guitars, a drummer, and  2 accordions in additional to the singers dressed as boat captains. It was a bit strange and not shanty singing as we’ve heard it around the world. It was entertaining and eventually more people arrived. We learned that the next cruise southbound out of Amsterdam is a 60-person charter. The crew deserves a break.

Today we finally leave Amadeus Silver II. If you must river cruise in Europe, I can recommend this boat. It is nearly perfect. I had no complains and couldn’t really find anything to improve. I still can’t recommend a river cruise in Europe though, sorry. We were up early and had a big breakfast. Clay and I each took something out of the restaurant to eat on the train later. We shared it. We did end up being called to leave the boat for our transfer and hour early at 9:30am. There was a driver and a tour guide to baby sit us until we got on the train. So, Alexandra was the only ugly spot in the whole debarkation/transfers process. I will never know what her story was. She certainly didn’t help an already bad situation. The Thalys high speed train arrived and we got our luggage stowed and got seated and waved goodbye to our guide. Graham had the seat next to me on the train and he swapped with Clay so we got to sit together. We got to Paris Nord about 2:35pm. We walked out past the front of the train and quickly found a driver with Amras and all our names written on a paper. I don’t believe he spoke English. I don’t believe he spoke much to any of us except to have us point to our names on the sign and make sure he had us all and all our luggage. Off we went. We loaded up a van that couldn’t have held anymore and we drove around 2 hours straight through to Les Andelys.

We walked through another boat to board and quickly got our keys and our luggage moved into our cabins. We all went straight to tea for something to eat. Then Clay and I took a quick walk around the charming half-timbered little town in the hour before the safety briefing. It turned out the safety briefing was postponed a day because not everyone had arrived. Instead we had a life onboard talk/port talk in Finnish, German and English. This may get a bit cumbersome. We had a problem communicating in the dining room that we are not with the Celebrity Cruises/Amras group that has their own guide/director. The maître d’ did change the sign at the table we wound up occupying but I don’t think he got it. Things are a bit different here. They are also different. The cabins are much smaller and less well insulated and built. I would say they are uglier along with the rest of the boat but some people prefer the décor. We don’t have refrigerators and even worse the Amadeus Diamond does not have an ice machine in the Amadeus Club in the aft or any ice buckets to keep ice from the bar. So, we already started with the bad news that the boat is not in Paris and there will be no scenic night time sail away. The only reason that anyone saw the Eiffel Tower is that I was looking around for it and pointed it out as we sped off in a packed van in horrendous traffic in the rain. Our guide in Amsterdam this morning told us that yesterday was the coldest temperature ever recorded on that date! They skipped fall in Europe this year and went straight to winter. Bad for us!

So, since we couldn’t have the safety briefing until tomorrow we had the port talk. Tomorrow we will drive almost all the way back to Paris to visit Auvers sur l’Oise. This is one of the Impressionists bases and we will visit a museum about that. It is also where Van Gogh died and we will see where he is buried. Looking and not looking forward to that. We were all hoping they’d sail on towards the sea and catch the ports toward Paris on the way back but no. We will stay overnight in Les Andelys. We had to move during dinner because the police boarded the 3 riverboats and informed them that they cannot sit and run generators all night. We all moved upstream outside the city limits I guess and moved back the next morning because we weren’t allowed to get on and off there. We did not sleep as well. There is also no alarm clock on the bedside table. There is no bedside table. Well, things are different and louder. The windows don’t move up and down electrically, but have one side panel that slides open. That’s OK, given the cold and rain we haven’t been opening the window much anyway.

There is a tiny inadequate closet and drawers compared to all the drawers and shelves and walk-in closet on Silver II. Really bad news since they expect us to dress for dinner on this boat and that was never expected on the last! I hope they get over it because Clay and our dining companion did not even bring coats and ties.

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Day 13, Final day on Amadeus Silver II

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

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Last night they had what they called the most successful Pirates Night of the season according to the crew. I can understand why. There was at least one and possibly more holding gripe sessions/cocktail parties in various places onboard for a long while before dinner. Many were clearly drunk. It is good to see them at least trying to enjoy themselves.

Early this morning, we entered the Netherlands. I don’t know what time. A bit before 6am I looked out and I think we were in a large sea-going ship sized lock. I went to the bathroom and when I looked again, we were exiting it. No one said anything about any locks here, but there is a lot we are missing being informed of, so that doesn’t mean anything.  We went to breakfast about 7am right after they opened it. We watched as the landscape changed from the polder to a city. The city was Utrecht. Then just after 8am in a cold, drizzling rain, we docked. In Utrecht. There were some confusing announcements and finally it was clear that they announced we were docked in Utrecht. They announced that the tours and independent sightseers would be bused to Amsterdam at 9am for about a 30 minute ride. It was an hour ride, but it was scenic along the Amstel River part of the way and included a photo stop at an old windmill. Our first stop in Amsterdam was in front of Central Station to load a canal boat for a tour. It was fully glass enclosed and had good visibility and was comfortable. After we had another short bus ride and we were let out to have a guided walk through the Begijn former convent area then to have 20 minutes free time to walk a section of Singel along the floating flower markets. Clay got a cone of fries with mayo. Hot and delicious. We reloaded the buses and drove to meet the boat moored not far from the Central Station. It had started raining by the end of our free time and it was colder every time they let us out of the buses. Our guide told us they had predicted a light snow. We turned on the BBC World News and there is a big earliest of the season European winter storm all the way from south of Paris to past Amsterdam. I just checked outside 15 minutes or so ago and it was still very cold and windy but the rain had stopped and it wasn’t snowing, not even lightly. We have the afternoon free here and we’re in Amsterdam but no one was willing to go out and do anything. Not even to eat Dutch Pancakes. We ate lunch in the dining room. The daily program said they were also serving a light buffet in the Panorama Lounge, but they didn’t. We ate hamburgers and sandwiches in the restaurant. So, I got mostly packed up and Clay slept with the TV on.  

We disembark tomorrow morning. There are 5 of us onboard that we know about that are transferring to the Amadeus Diamond tomorrow in Paris. We all have our train tickets. The train leaves at 11:17am and arrives at Paris Nord at 2:35pm.We were contacted after lunch with the news that there is no boat in Paris. They said there is a broken lock on the river and that it will take at least 48 hours to be repaired. The other issue is that we all got another printout of our train tickets last night, but still no mention of the details of our included transfers here or in Paris. Today, since they told us there was no boat they also said someone would meet us at the train station and we’d learn more there. One of the others who will be with us is older with trouble walking distances. He told me he’d inquired of reception the details of the morning transfer and he’d let me know what he heard as he knew all 5 of us were waiting to hear. After we returned and got the call about no boat, Clay realized we still had no word of morning luggage transfers to the Central Station. Now it is supposedly about 200 meters away. It may be as the crow flies. I mean you can see it from here. But it is about 2 city blocks long itself and to get there from here with luggage, you have to find a sidewalk and watch for bicycles, scooters, cars, trams, buses, trains, tracks. It would not be an easy walk and as Graham points out, our ability or willingness don’t matter because we all purchased a package that includes all transfers. That is certainly underlined on tomorrow’s itinerary in our final documents. Clay went to the desk to inquire before lunch. Alexandra was there and told him no they would not provide a transfer for us that it was 200 feet away (not, but immaterial) and that we could walk. He balked. She basically called him fat and lazy and that he should haul himself and his luggage over there on his own. He balked again, more forcefully this time by pointing out that we had paid for transfers and expected them regardless of how fat and lazy we might be. She said she would check and see what she could find out. Then our male dining companion had basically the same conversation. He and Clay and I all walked by the desk later when Alexandra was not there and the receptionist there called us all over separately as we passed and told us that they would order a van for us to transfer us and our luggage to the train station they just needed to know what time we wanted to go. Graham said he wanted to go at 10:30am and that he would settle it with the front desk. He learned all of this from us during lunch since he missed the whole thing by not going to his cabin before lunch. There is a disembarkation talk at 6:30pm tonight so I guess we’ll see if it gets addressed then. At 6:45pm is the Captain’s Farewell Cocktail where maybe we’ll find out who the captain is now that we’re leaving. At 7pm is the Farewell Dinner. We aren’t dressing for this one either even though we’ve had the afternoon free because we packed up most everything except what we are wearing now or tomorrow. I suppose that while I have Internet, I’ll go ahead and post this now.

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Day 12

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

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This is Monday afternoon and evening’s report. I’ll post it when we next have Internet!

We pushed the afternoon/evening schedule back by about 40 minutes with some difficulty disembarking some early disembarking passengers and the Dutch for their engagement. We broke one of the big chains securing the floating dock in Mainz and did 2 180 degree turns to dock on the starboard side and then continue sailing. I have no idea why we had to dock starboard. But there it is.

During tea time Simona held the port talk for this evening and Tuesday. This was not in the program and the announcement by the ACD, Sorina was mangled and largely misunderstood so there were only about 30 people there. The main point was that the hotel restaurant out by the Lorelei rock listed in the daily program could not take us for dinner so we lost the 40-minute drive out and back and can walk to and from the dinner place in Rudesheim at Rudesheimer Schloss. This is better in my mind and I gave here thumbs up. She reacted emotionally which seemed odd. We are expected to set sail in the morning by 4:30am and should start seeing castles of note by 6:30 to 7am. We’ll have to get up early I think. Simona said she would only narrate the views on the Sun Deck, Panorama Lounge and Amadeus Club. We expect to let our Amras group off in Koblenz late in the afternoon for our walking tour which will probably mean a bus ride to meet the boat in Cologne. Not looking forward to that. Simona said if they could find a place where they could schedule to pick us up along the river they would, but to expect the bus ride.

So, now we are back from dinner. Simona has quit her CD job after years with this company and left the boat. She must have left right before the police arrived over our hasty and evidently illegal disembarkation of the Dutch passengers at Mainz (see above). About the same time the police arrived a young Romanian woman named Alexandra arrived and started shouting instructions to the passengers waiting to disembark. Sorina came over the speakers and asked everyone to stay onboard until she asked us to leave. Everyone followed instructions as we waited for vegetables to be loaded and laundry to be unloaded. Then we all headed out for our respective tours. Alexandra read from the front desk handout through our AudioVoxes as we walked. She told us she was giving us a guided tour and we would walk the Drosselgasse and go to the Siegfried Mechanical Music Museum. She did none of those. She told us we could take the cable cars for 7 Euros roundtrip to Germania and she would show us where to get tickets and board to do it. It was closed but she didn’t even know where it was until Clay and I pointed it out to her. So, she walked us up an alley and lucked into a Kathe Wolfart shop which was open and she suggested people shop with free time and meet back at 6:50pm. That gave her 20 minutes to guide people to Drosselgasse and find the now closed Siegfried to find out if they would reopen specially for us. Then she turned the wrong way and walked everyone a couple of blocks uphill to a parking lot before the vineyards start. I knew she was going the wrong way once we started up because I had a map and I’d been here before. I am certain she was just lost. There was a map on the back of her information handout the same as mine. Anyway, we went to Drosselgasse where we saw another man on Amras and he pointed out our restaurant. We walked back to see if Alexandra ever came back and found Sorina looking for the group. We pointed her in the direction last seen and soon they all came back down the hill. That is how we learned where they’d gone. We walked down past Drosselgasse and beside Siegfried’s and boarded a little motorized tram train with enclosed cars. It took us on a nocturnal tour through the vineyards almost up to the Germania monument. It was hard to see out of the glass cars in the dark but you could see the lights up and down the river valley as well as Germania lit up. It was a shame the cable cars weren’t open because we did that before and it would have been very cool at night. The train took us back to where it picked us up and dropped off the Amras group and took those who wanted a ride back to the boat. People could stay in town on their own and walk back when they wanted. We walked about halfway down and ate at Rudesheimer Schloss. It was hot, loud and crowded in there. It is the same place we had a great meal for lunch in 2003. This wasn’t as good, but it was OK. We had potato soup, chicken breast stuffed with grapes and apples with potatoes, Rudesheimer coffee and cherry ragout with vanilla ice cream. They were closing down as we left. The whole town seemed to be closing down around 10pm as we walked back to the boat. The boat had moved a bit and was harder to find in the dark. They were at the same pier but another boat was shore side and we were moored on the outside. Sorina was outside waiting for people and saw us aboard.

She said that she would prepare tomorrow’s program after we returned and they would be delivered overnight under our doors. It is unclear what exactly will happen after the Romantic Rhine Valley sailing early in the morning. It sounded like you had to disembark in Koblenz to take an hour or 2 walking tour and that in order to take the Cologne tour that you had to ride the bus from Koblenz to Cologne. I had been planning to skip Koblenz but I don’t know if I want to skip Cologne too. Probably I do! We spent a day and a night in Cologne in 2003 and I think we did all we wanted to do. I’ll have to wait to see the program and hope for a port talk to get enough information to help make a good decision. Alexandra said she would be the one narrating our morning scenic sailing. Sorina said she would. Alexandra did no work on tomorrow’s program while Sorina was out with us at dinner. I am afraid that neither of these nice Romania women are qualified or experienced enough to fill Simona’s shoes. I don’t know what is going on but Sorina told us the captain was dismissed yesterday. That was the 1^st captain. The 2^nd captain hasn’t been seen by any of us and we assume he is off the boat as well. The hotel manager said the captains had left on holiday. Sorina told us she had to hold us on the boat because originally we were supposed to have a little train transfer to Drosselgasse, but as we were ready to leave the operator called her phone and told her the corporate office had canceled the tour. She said she had to call the operator back and scheduled the better tour that we got instead and that was the reason for the delay and the random walk with Alexandra. I don’t know what is going on, but the delayed schedule should be all the drama we need without all these extra shenanigans. We will be lucky to get to Amsterdam in time for our train transfers to Paris.  Whatever happens, it will soon be over and we’ll be someone else’s problem for a week but still Amras’ to handle. Fingers crossed the worst will be over when we leave Silver II.

The daily program was delivered overnight. There was only partial information in it and Alexandra kept contradicting it in her announcements. There were partial and mostly incomprehensible announcements during the morning’s Romantic Rhine scenic sailing. That is all on Amadeus Cruises. The low visibility was no one’s fault! No sooner did we start sailing and the sun begin to rise than clouds starting sinking down the hillsides and mist started rising off the Rhine and soon there were times when almost nothing could be seen, like at the Lorelei rock. All anyone could do was laugh. If Simona hadn’t already quit this would have finished her that she worked so hard to get this scenic sailing stretch into the program and for it to be pointless.

About 10am the ship docked in Koblenz and let off touring passengers and independent tourers for Koblenz and the 1.5 hour bus ride to Cologne. Clay went and I stayed onboard. It was really cold today and I just couldn’t face the discomfort for the annoyance of short badly done tours and a long bus ride. They were paying everyone who took either tour 15 Euros in cash on the bus ride but I still wouldn’t go. When Clay got back he told me I had made the right decision because Cologne was a cluster cuss. What the guides in Koblenz thought was a 2 hour tour turned into 1 hour and they race walked them through the route before loading them in buses. They got to Cologne a little after 1pm. They all had their 15 Euros to get lunch now, but there was no time scheduled to have it. They met the guides who had been hired to guide from 11am to 2pm. They were paid for the time they had been there waiting and didn’t really care if they just walked them to a restaurant. So, they did after a 20 minute potty stop. Lunch took an hour. Finally the guides agreed to stay and take a group who said they could and would walk fast on about a 1 hour race around the cathedral with 10 minutes at the end to enter without her since she wasn’t licensed. The slow walkers were just led to the cathedral where their guide couldn’t enter either. Then Sorina and Alexandra wanted the guides to walk them to the dock, but they guides explained that the dock they were assigned was so far from the cathedral as to be off the map. It looked about 2km when we were docked. I was glad I stayed on and got some more but not a lot of scenic cruising in a stretch I hadn’t cruised before and got a good nap. Unfortunately, I decided to go to lunch onboard. That was a mistake and I should have known better. I had an apple I could have eaten by myself in Panorama Lounge after the classical quartet concert but I had read the menu and there was a beef in horseradish sauce dish as a main and a plum pancake dessert that sounded good so I went. We have not eaten in the restaurant for lunch because we feared a 2-hour lunch and we were right. But today they had no buffet in Panorama. There were probably only 2 dozen diners. The lunch they serve is a hybrid between self-service buffet and table ordering. Everything is on the menu but the soup, salad and appetizers are on the buffet and you order the main and dessert at the table. The problem is that even if you only want main and dessert, you have to wait for it. But, if you aren’t there when the room opens and put in your order then they won’t take it anyway. So, you have to sit in there the whole time. This is exactly what many of these cruisers came for and they wouldn’t change it. I told a new waiter when he brought a bread basket to me that I would be alone and didn’t want any bread so he took it away. He told my usual waiter who then stopped a British woman entering alone to find out if her party was joining her. They were not, they had gone ashore. They asked her in front of me (without asking me, btw) if she would sit at my table with me instead of at hers alone. She reluctantly agreed. Then she had a salad after she went to the headwaiter about the absence of a bread basket. When the waiter got in trouble I had to intervene and accept the blame as I had believed I was dining alone! Then she had soup. Fortunately she skipped appetizers but we still sat for a long time before the main course and then for dessert. It was a nearly 2-hour meal. Everyone within earshot of me spent that time complaining about how bad an experience this has been. I explained to my dining companion what a really bad river cruise was like. 3 nights out of 30 onboard a boat and abandoned in Vienna 2 weeks early to find your own way. This still seems like a success to me. It may have finally cured us of river cruising though. Certainly I think we have gotten European river cruising out of our systems!

We are stopping now for a technical stop to disembark the Dutch group after their early dinner and their evening at some theater. I have no idea where we are picking them up again. Perhaps they will drive on to Amsterdam. Whoever sold this group this cruise did all of us a serious disservice and only compounded the troubles. If the Dutch group wanted to charter and control and take over a boat, then they should have chartered the whole boat. Whoever booked a large group and promised them control of the boat cheated us and the staff and crew and most importantly the Dutch group themselves. Badly done.

We got our laundry back today on schedule. I think that went OK. I put it away with a cursory look and the form didn’t allow you to keep a copy of the inventory so I have no idea if we got back everything Clay sent out. We’ll assume it’s okay until we find otherwise.

Tonight is Pirates Dinner. They already had some of the vacant tables set as if they’d been vandalized or set by pirates. It was funny last time but I am sure those who had not been to a pirate dinner onboard yet had to be mystified.  If I can get online I will post this now with the assumption that I won’t write about dinner. Tomorrow we should arrive in Amsterdam for a final 4 hour walking and canal boat tour followed by lunch onboard, a free afternoon and a final dinner. The final documents say that dinner will be followed by a performance by a Dutch shanty choir. We’ll see.

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Day 11

Monday, October 12, 2015

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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 2^nd. 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!

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Day 10

Sunday, October 11, 2015

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We had the opportunity to sleep in this morning, but I was up first at 6:30am. Breakfast started at 7:30am and we were some of the few in there in the first hour. Yesterday morning at this time we were coming through the first of 34 locks on the Main River when we got up. This morning at 8am we were coming through the 16^th lock. We spent the bulk of the day sailing the Main River today. They tell us at this point we can’t get caught up because of the log jam of boats caused by the low water issues with the Rhine and Danube Rivers. The problem of the log jam of boats is compounded by the number of locks and the waits this creates to use them. I believe they have been doing the best they could with the exception of Bamberg. The ACD seems to have run a charm offensive on the other bus yesterday afternoon with beer and trivia and is now everyone’s darling. We weren’t on that bus, so I don’t know what’s going on. After breakfast, Simona gave a lecture on the “Castles on the Rhine” about the stretch of the river between Rudesheim and Koblenz. After that the string quartet onboard with the Dutch group gave a concert in the Panorama Lounge. They were really very good. True to their word they let the other passengers stay even though they shut the Amadeus Club to the rest of us early for practice. I still find it unacceptable that they are allowed to take over public space from the rest of us especially since the sun deck is closed. Of course, as cold as it has gotten we probably wouldn’t go up there anyway. The bad news is that a large group of guests that have been on since Budapest set up a game with tiles right behind them shortly before they started playing and talked loudly and laughed loudly and then made a lot of noise with the tiles before bringing a duet to a stop before they quieted and the duet restarted. This large Dutch group has been disruptive to the rest of us, but they were just immature and rude. After that there was a taste of Germany buffet with oompa music in the lounge. We enjoyed it but the music was loud and annoying by the boat’s duo. We sailed for another couple of hours before disembarking after the 19^th lock. We boarded buses and rode about an hour to Miltenberg. We had a guided walking tour there. There were 2 buses full and one guide! We had about an hour there and no free time. Since all anyone vocal wants to do here is shop, it didn’t really matter because stores are closed on Sunday. We drove another 30 minutes to Wertheim with the local guide. She led us again through Wertheim. Again there was no free time available. The boat had arrived and was docked in Wertheim. All aboard was 6:45. Dinner was 7:30pm. The program said the port talk for tomorrow would be in the restaurant after dinner. During dessert the hotel manager came on and gave a pep talk and introduced a new captain. He said he had come from a boat that had just come through the Rhine from the other direction and he was here to help troubleshoot the upcoming segment. He had brought with him the corporate level captain and their corporate boss and they were onboard to handle the problems that we’ve been having and are expected to have. He invited everyone to the lounge for a free drink. The hotel manager thanked him and thanked us and offered a 2^nd free drink. They gave the mic to Simona and she explained that we were going to fall further behind again in our sailing schedule and that except for the Dutch group she had done the best she could to replace what was promised with what could be delivered. So, instead of waking up in Rudesheim tomorrow morning we will sail all morning. She expected us to arrive in Mainz, where the Main River meets the Rhine, around 2pm. There the Dutch passengers would be disembarked to get to a theater they had booked. (She didn’t say anything about picking them up again. I assume they’ll meet us in Rudesheim.) The boat will continue to sail to Rudesheim about 4:30pm. There everyone with tours booked or with included tours like us will have them. Ours originally included lunch and that will become dinner. We were also supposed to have a tour of Koblenz tomorrow, but that was not discussed. The boat will overnight in Rudesheim in order to have scenic sailing of the castles area the next morning. Beyond that it will be decide each day depending on how far we can sail.

Our dining companions had received the answer to their question about how we would receive our lunch ashore 15 Euro pp per occurrence shipboard credits in cash. They had bought some Swarvoski crystal jewelry with their 60 Euros at the onboard shop. Clay has a bag of laundry ready and the list filled out to within 2 Euros of our 60 Euros. It is not a big bag! Clay figured though that we weren’t ever getting cash back (as did I which was why our dining companions had pinned Simona down for an answer) and he is also certain that we will not have any free time in Amsterdam to do laundry like we had planned. So, this is his perfect plan.

We have been without Internet all day, so I'll get this posted when I can. Sorry! I don't know when Clay will get the photos linked in...

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Days 8 and 9

Friday, October 9, 2015

Photo Slideshow Oct 9

Let me begin this a day later by saying that I hope this was the low point of the trip. The new people are not a get along kind of group. They all seem to have arrived in a bad humor and are determined to see everyone miserable. The biggest issue though is that there is a very large group onboard from the Netherlands. They seem to be under the impression that they have chartered the boat for a string quartet musical special cruise. They have a very pushy tour leader with them as well as the quartet’s leader. I don’t know what arrangement they made with Amadeus/Luftner, but it should have included the fact that they in fact did NOT charter the entire boat. So, yesterday we had fallen still further behind as we had a lot of time spent embarking and disembarking passengers the day before. You’d have thought the fact that all these new people arrived in Nuremburg to find no boat and be busing for a few hours to find us in Straubing would have alerted them that we were behind our sailing schedule and some flexibility was going to be in order. Anyway, today we were to have a morning tour of Bamberg. We did not. We had a morning sailing. That should have been pleasant. It was not. The musical group had already taken the mic during Simona’s opening day talk and asked the rest of us to keep out of the Panorama Lounge when they were in there playing. It turns out they also use the lounge as their practice room! The sun deck is closed for the cruise. The only small public deck is accessible now only through the Panorama Lounge. You get dirty looks and/or comments for going in or through there so we tried to avoid it. We went back to the Amadeus Lounge to find that the tiny back deck had been turned into storage/smoking area. We set up at a small corner table by the back windows away from the door. We weren’t there long before the Hotel Director came in and started moving all the furniture. I asked him what he was doing when he had only 5 chairs left in place and he said he was setting up for a lecture. I asked what lecture since there was none in the program and he said it wasn’t in the program because it wasn’t for us that we needed to leave. So now we had the use of no public space onboard. We aren’t getting a discounted rate on this segment for partial use of the boat!  We went to the cabin and got coats and walked through the Panorama Lounge between practice and concert to stake out another corner table in front. We sat there while most of the boat had breakfast. As soon as we approached anything remotely interested people would push and shove us and get in front, beside and behind and push and elbow until it was past and then we’d do it all over. Simona put out a nice sheet with information about the locks and the Rhine-Main-Danube canal and gave a talk about it. Everything I wanted to see was the aquaducts where the canal goes over roads and rivers and we were off the boat or it was dinner and/or dark when we passed them so I didn’t get to see them anyway. That just happens but the tour fiasco was again on the new passengers and the CD’s staff.

During lunch, we started to dock at a sign with a landing in the middle of nowhere that said Roth. We disembarked there for the afternoon’s tour. Evidently the next largest group onboard from Hong Kong never understood a word of Simona’s briefing (which she prefaced by asking if everyone understood English and then said this would be an English-language only cruise, Not). So at least one couple walked off with their keys and without their boarding cards and a map of Bamberg and started walking. I have no idea where they went since there was only a foot/bike path and one road through an industrial area, past a giant rock shop and then fields to a bigger road. The boat left them because they had no way of knowing they weren’t aboard. The police were there to meet us before we docked and stayed, evidently, until we sailed again. They found the couple somewhere and figured they were from the boat. How else to explain an older Asian couple wandered in rural Bavarian? They called the boat which could not confirm they were ours. The police told them to put in at the next available dock and call back with a location and wait. The police put them in a taxi and sent them to the boat which the couple was relieved to see and they pulled out their keys and went to their cabin. That was only one of many delays. The other was that because of the hard day of rain we had 2 days ago, a lot of boats that had been stuck downstream came full streaming North and the boat wound up waiting hours to get into at least one lock. So, we just fell further behind the sailing schedule today while continuing to stick to the touring itinerary. This has been hard, but the special Dutch group is livid. They have musical performances, theaters and other things booked and scheduled and paid for and now they realize they can’t keep their special itinerary but think we should all just fold up and give them what they want. I don’t know how they think that will happen and it is already unacceptable that they have taken over all the public space for their own use while the sun deck is closed. I am still just happy that we haven’t been put off the boat with our luggage and are not having a bus tour or abandoned. Viking set the bar pretty low for me when it comes to expectations of river cruising. The rage continued unabated this morning. Most of these people will never be satisfied. Simona has committed another 15 Euros per person credit to our shipboard accounts for today’s missing lunch which will be on our own in Wurzburg. Our dining companions have been concerned about actually getting that money. I have opined that the boat has no way of actually handing anyone that cash on disembarkation. They intend it just to be deducted from people’s balances. Since we all booked with Amras and are all-inclusive, we don’t have balances. He pointed that out to Simona today and for the first time, he heard from someone other than me that they have no way of reimbursing us for these account credits. Simona told him she’d call HQ today and try to find out how they can handle it. I told him that best case they’d promise to mail us checks at home after the cruise and with any luck in months we’d receive something payable in US Dollars that we could deposit but I wouldn’t count on it. That won’t satisfy him, so we’ll see if he can shake out enough physical Euros for all of in Amsterdam or Paris!

Suffice it to say, that once again there was no Captain’s Welcome Cocktail Party. The welcome dinner did not begin until 10pm. We left the restaurant at 11:30pm. The really sad part was that we only had less than 2 hours of touring in Bamberg with no free time. We unloaded the 2 buses and immediately the Dutch leader from the first bus came back to the Asst. CD in our bus. The upshot was that after almost a 2 hour drive to get to Bamburg the Dutch had realized this trip was going to mess up their concert schedule, they needed the toilet and then because some of them weren’t dressed for how cold it was that they wanted to return to the boat! Once this got around in English, a couple from our bus got in her face and concurred. So after the independent touring people had already left with instructions to meet back here at 7pm, the ACD changed the touring people’s time to return to 6:15pm. Clay and I were desperate for toilets too, but took the time to point out to here that we were here for the published program not for what passengers voted for after we left the boat and she had already announced the 7pm return so it was pointless to try to change it. You know what happened. Now, absolutely no one was satisfied. We were all shorted out of the tour, out of free time, and we got to sit on the buses and wait. The last woman to return came back 30 minutes early in her mind and thought she was being left while those who wanted to turn around on arrival after using the toilets were mad about the extra wait. The ACD did not speak German and the bus driver did not speak anything else so that was another problem. He was also some kind of pervert, but that is a whole other issue. By this time she had been reamed out so many ways and the boat was further away than expected and did not have a place to dock. She just shut down. She refused to speak to anyone including the driver or her assistant and we drove all the way to Furth and then on down to Nuremburg which we circled twice in the dark without any word before the people from yesterday’s tour realized and started shouting about it. Finally the shouting and berating and he colleague convinced her to pick up the microphone and she angrily announce we had just had a free night time tour of Nuremburg and would be on the boat soon. But that was not true either. We had circled Nuremburg twice but it was no tour. Even without any narration we didn’t circle the city walls lit at night or anything. Just the outer modern ugly parts in the dark. People were hungry, tired and still had to use the toilets. They have not expected any bus toilet use since we arrived in Europe this time. Not sure what is up with that. We eventually stood on the side of the canal by piles of sand at an industrial company’s dock to wait for the boat. When we got aboard they served the cocktail party’s hors d’ouevres and shots of schnapps. This had been one of the things that had the new arrivals most upset was that they were having a cocktail party on the boat while we drove and drove on the bus. The ACD would never really address this to them, though I tried to quiet those around me by assuring them that they were not since we were mostly on the buses. The ACD did once say they can’t have the cocktail party because there are not passengers onboard but she was being shouted down by that time. That was her own fault for entertaining the notion that she was taking votes for our program on the Bamberg sidewalk.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Saturday morning and we are already an hour beside today’s revised schedule. We are still planning to go ashore for the long day on the bus with little touring time to Wurzburg and Rothenburg because that is what we paid to come see, they are worth seeing again and we don’t know what to expect from being on the boat with these new people and what areas might still be off limits to us. It is a bad situation but I know it could be worse so I think I am being positive and trying to enjoy myself. But the CD pointing out we are not Syrian refugees and should be grateful doesn’t really address problems that may or may not be in her control. My standard is not that I am not a homeless refuge at this price, but that I haven’t been put ashore with my luggage and left to fend for myself in the middle of Europe.

We are back 9 hours later with 2 hours of touring and one hour of free time. The rest was bathroom and standing or sitting around waiting or riding the bus back and forth. It is sad to have so little time at the places you’ve come to see and the people on this segment are largely bitter complainers. We left the boat after we had transited the first Main River lock at Viereth. We toured the Wurzburg Residenz, or 3 rooms of it. I wonder what they do with the rest of it.  It was as spectacular as I remembered. We had a 3 Franconian wine tasting in the cellar. We tasted a Muller-Thurgau, a Silvaner and a Riesling. They were all good, but I have always loved these wines. The bad news is those bulbous bottles are never on a case sale anywhere! We had about an hour of free time and it took most of that to eat. We had Franconian Brats and wiener schnitzel with potato salad, a dark local weissbeir and a Coke Light. It was good, the price was reasonable, service was prompt and courteous. We ate at Café am Dom. We had about a 20 minute walk about. In Rothenburg we learned we had even less time. We had just over one hour of guided touring and no free time. I cannot get anything by Internet now even though it says it is connected and has a signal. I can’t get email or load a webpage. I say this by way of saying that without a map, I can’t tell you where we are or how far we are behind now. I can’t gauge how long the bus rides and how short the port visits will be tomorrow.

This morning we put in right beside a campground at about 8am. I guess they were surprised when we came tromping ashore and stood around jabbering while waiting for the buses. A woman walked up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. She asked if I spoke German in German. I said no, English. She switched and asked where I was from. When I told her she repeated it and got very excited. I was a little mystified because I thought she was one of the Dutch group. Then she started asking about where the boat was going and had come from and I realized she wasn’t from the boat. We needed to go to the bus then, so I pointed to it and she waved me on. I gave her an NC patch and it made her very happy. I told Clay she was the first German to welcome me. For all I know, she might not even have been German! The boat left before we did! If I had a map, I’d tell you the name of the towns where we were dropped off and picked up but I don’t so. It was an hour and a half drive to Wurzburg and an hour drive from Rothenburg and the towns were both on the Main River.

I forgot to mention that last night’s Captain’s Welcome dinner was a repeat of the previous week’s menu. I don’t know if the whole week will be repeats but I know we all hope not. If I can get the blog page to load up, I’ll post this. If so, I won’t write anymore about today. If not, I might be back.

Photo Slideshow Oct 10

Day 7

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Photo Slideshow

Clay woke us both up before 6am again. Things were a bit off this morning as people were moving luggage and leaving today. Clay was able to get some fried eggs this morning so he was satisfied. Our dining companions ordered porridge and instead got poached eggs so they were a little less satisfied. I just stayed with the buffet.

Since our 2 tours were running together today since we had a 2 hour drive in the morning and about 1.5 hours in the afternoon to rejoin the boat, they fed us lunch in a restaurant today. We were surprised to wake up at Straubing instead of Regensburg. I am sure those people disembarking were even more surprised. It looks like a dirt levee-top single top road. It pretty much is but it looks like the middle of nowhere. At least it wasn’t raining. We left about 8:30am with 14 people. Five chose to stay onboard. It might have been a smarter option but the help acted like they really wanted us out of our cabins and the restaurants so I don’t think I’d have been comfortable here. We did a drive around Nuremburg then a walking tour inside the medieval walls. It is such a pretty city in there around the castle. We walked by the Albrecht Durer house and the Rathaus. We walked to the Frauenkirche as the animated bell tower clock was ringing noon! Sadly, like the stone bridge yesterday, the signature fancy fountain was covered up with scaffolding. The open air market didn’t seem as special either. We only had about an hour of free time, so we didn’t go far or do much. Clay bought and ate a chocolate lebkuchen. I guess it was only OK because he didn’t get anymore.

We had lunch at a wine place just off the main square in the old Spital monastery. It was very good and it was also our restroom stop. Free toilets! Yeah! They served iced tap water, pancake soup, Nuremburg sausages with sauerkraut and German potato salad followed by cheesecake. No tea or coffee were offered. They just came and collected money from those who had ordered other drinks. We reboarded the bus and drove to the site of the Nuremburg Trials. It is still a working courtroom, so you can’t visit but they show you the outside of the courtrooms and the prison. Then we drove out to the Nazi Parade Grounds/Zeppelin fields. This place gives me the willies. It was different this time in that they are allowing weeds to overtake it and grow out of cracks everywhere. They had up signs about their restoration/renovation/preservation efforts but I thought at first that they were allowing it to be demolished by neglect. Weird. We then made a final stop of about an hour at the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds in the unfinished Congress Hall. It was just creepy and disturbing. No one can ever explain what happened and it seemed too much like honoring Hitler and the rest and justifying it. We had never been to this center before. I think if I had known what it was I might have skipped the whole day. The boat was docked in Regensburg when we rejoined it. So, we just keep falling further behind each day. I don’t know where all the new passengers joined. If they boarded in Straubing or Regensburg or both or somewhere else! Regensburg was packed with river boats when we arrived and like the stone bridge, the whole river side area was a construction zone. Not conducive or appealing. We arrived back about 6:30pm. Simona came on with an announcement asking everyone to come to a quick safety briefing before dinner at 7pm. We have new people from Netherlands, Belgium and I don’t know where else. Simona asked if everyone was English speaking and no one responded so she said good, this sailing is all in English. She sounded like we are going to be sailing hard day and night through the canal to try to catch up with the schedule. She said that the captain has closed off the sun deck for this sailing. She also introduced a string quartet that is the centerpiece of the large Dutch group’s reason for coming. The leader spoke and explained this to the rest of us with the open invitation for the rest of us to attend their performances in Panorama Lounge, as long as we understood this was acoustic music and required us not to drink and talk or more around in the lounge while they were in there. Since the sun deck is closed there is not a lot of public space left if they are taking the lounge over. We’ll see. Dinner was not as not as disturbing as last night’s with jellied pig head or as unappealing as the Gala Farewell, but it was a clear winner of 3^rd worst. I ate the always available chicken breast and nothing else. We had just all gotten used to wait staff to find they had shuffle stations this cruise and we got new waiters. We also got a new cabin stewardess. Oh well. I am sure this week will fly by just like last week did.

Photo Slideshow