Cruising the Rhine

Well we have mixed reviews about our first river cruise on The Rhine.  The ship MPS Rotterdam was lovely and we had a nice spacious cabin.  The food was nice if you liked pork but there were was little other choice if you didn't like pork.  We were packed like sardines into the restaurant as they only did one sitting at meal times which meant you were continually having to ask people to get out of their seats to let you go to the buffet and then ask them to get up again so you could get back to your table with your food.  And one day I had a guy who was so sick of having to keep moving to let people through that he refused to move for me.  So mealtimes became something to dread.  The weather was lovely but rather too hot for us as some days it was nudging 40c, thank goodness there was air conditioning on the boat but it meant staying on the boat quite a bit as it wasn't always possible to find shade.  The optional excursions were very expensive so we limited how many  of those that we did and in a way we were glad that we did as the boat was often on the move whilst people were on shore tours and it would have meant missing parts of the Rhine.  It was lovely to see a proper working river - we were impressed by the amount of freight that travels up and down the Rhine - shame they can't use our rivers a bit more in the UK instead of packing everything onto the roads.  Due to the heat it was necessary to drink loads but the bottled water was very overpriced on the boat - it became a competition to try and find the cheapest water onshore.

But apart from the restaurant problems and having to pay over inflated prices for water and soft drinks we did have a relaxing time and I got loads of stitching done - hopefully very soon I will get them made into cards and will show you here.

As usual I didn't take many photographs, I always tend to get on and live the holiday and forget to record it to - but Dad and Richard were snapping away so at some point I will get my mitts on their photographs.  In the meantime here are some that I did take -

View from the ship -

Mum and Dad relaxing on the sundeck-

It must have been hot as I am wearing a skirt but of course I am sitting in the shade - no sunbathing for me!

Indonesian buffet night in the restaurant

Cuckoo clock at Tittesee in the Black Forest

Mum and Dad

Richard and I