Rhine Valley – September 29
Expecting a full`day of cruising the Rhine today with the Rhine Valley being the most photographic area along the way. Have managed to get the very front chairs in the lounge on our ship “MS Amabella” so we have a lovely view of both left and dight sides of the bank.
The weather has not been very kind to us over the last couple of days however as we begin our day cruising along, we are beginning to see some blue sky so we could be in luck!
Have been travelling a couple of hours now and already ‘castled out’! Actually there are heaps of small castles but the larger ones are the amazing ones – mostly perched high on hilltops. The villages along the Rhine are all built on the rivers edge as the hillsides slope quite markedly up behind each bank. We are supposedly heading into a whole bunch of locks eithere today or tomorrow, not sure when but through our travels we go through 68 locks in total, we’ve done 2 in the past 2 days so there’s a few to go!!!
The ship we are on is rather nice – only 150 people and it was only launched in May this year so everything is very new and working! The food is amazing! Quantity wise it’s full on – wine and beer (good wines at that) are all included with dinner each night and glasses are continually filled so there’s no shortage of booze! There might be by the end of the trip though!! Much of this Rhine Valley area has very steep vineyards on the slopes so there are plenty of growing areas around. Not sure how the grapes are picked – must be by hand as Kemm thinks it would be too steep for machines – who cares how they pick them – they just taste good!
Off for an early lunch now – we arrive in “Rudesheim” shortly – gee that was fast – it’s now the next day and we’ve visited Rudesheim! was a fabulous little place. Rudesheim is famous for being “Reisling” country so of course we indulged in a glass or 2 of reisling in a great little wine bar in dappled sunlight under the grapevines and the red and white tablecloths, with a german folk guy pumping away on his accordion with typical German music – it was a great atmosphere. Thought we might move on and find another similar spot but think that was the best one in town. There were a million tourists here in Rudesheim of course, our boat was first into the docks along the river and thought we were the only boat in town until we had to wander back to the boat a couple of hours later and found another dozen boats tied up! There were people everywhere! First into a dock usually means first out of the port as we were.
This ‘blog’ has been on the go for the past couple of days now but internet access is fairly slow at times and although I have been waiting to put photos up online, that might have to wait a little so you won’t see any photos of late.
However I am going to send this out to you all at least to say we are still here cruising along on this fabulous river cruise boat – APT’s MS Amabella, and thoroughly enjoying things.
Have now arrived in Wurzburg (still in Germany) with many of our boat people heading off to some palace and historical village – Kemm, myself and a bunch of others have decided that onboard and inside away from the 7 degrees, rain and heavy mist is a much more cozy option! Have concluded that we are heading south towards the Bavarian Alps which is why things have turned decidedly cold. Everyone does make mention of the fact though that Budpest in 10 days time is currently 27 degrees so we are all looking forward to that!!
