Today we began a 9 day cruise along the Rhine River from Basel, Switzerland, north through France, Germany and ending in Amsterdam. Our spotlerss ship is the beautiful, six-year-old River Queen, operated by Uniworld. Our room is very nice – luxurious, in fact. There are 125 passengers and 37 crew on board. The 100% american 100%white passengers average somewhat more than 60 years in age, but there are several younger people (like us! 🙂 and even one nine year old girl traveling with her Dad and Grandparents. Service on board the ship is outstanding, the food is great, and our itinereray is jam-packed. The only thing that is lacking is access to the Internet. There is a laptop computer on board with which passengers may send e-mail, but “normal” access to the Internet is not possible, making blogging a challenge. To make this entry, I had to locate an Internet cafe in Heidelberg on the third day of our cruise.
After a quick tour of the charming town of Basel, we sailed for Strasbourg under cloudy skies.
View more pictures from day one of our trip here.
Indeed, the world’s a very small place! When we toured the Rhein in ’04, we steamed the river via the “River Queen.” Our tour guide was a very genial, sandy-haired fellow named “Wade,” and our Bavarian-born German hostess was a true delight. A great voyage. The bier in Koblenz topped any we drank along the route.