nuremburg to remich

So, we leave a week from tomorrow to join the Avalon Visionary on the Main Canal, the Rhine and the Moselle. Having read this forum dilegently for the last 4 months, I think the water levels are good for our cruise. If anyone knows something different please share. :eek:

Thanks to everyone for helping me pass the last several weeks of low waters and bus tours at the price of river cruises, and boat transfers.

I think we are ready to go, and I am looking forward to the trip. Will try to post some sort of daily report.

Cheers

jc

Looking forward to hearing about it! Have a great trip!

Looking forward to your report. This itinerary is a favourite for my bucket list.

I am afraid to say the river levels have fallen again. Yesterday in Koblenz they were at their lowest for this month. :eek:

Hoping for some rain, it is a very dry autumn. But a lot can happen within 48 hours. Seeing that you start your cruise in the canal I am sure things will be fine by the time you get to the Rhine.

Have a great cruise.

notamermaid

I assume the main canal is always navigable. I haven't read about the Rhine section being closed this year, nor the Moselle, maybe I missed that????

jc

I did not hear anything either. Mind you, it takes a lot of - rather: little water - to close a river when it is low. It normally does not happen on the Rhine or Moselle. The small boats can normally still sail (draft something like 80cm) when the cruise ships cannot anymore and closing a main artery in Europe, hmm, not a good idea for trade.

As I was out of the country when the river was at its lowest in August I missed the local news and did not read the papers.

It really is more a problem of the large ships at the docks. The barges of course still not sailing at full capacity. Much traffic.

It is slightly misty this morning. Landscape is sort of like through a camera lense that softens the shapes. Nice.

notamermaid

Hello from the Main canal... we just left Miltenburg (sp?) lovely little town on the canal, that has no hotel and lots of lovely half timbered buildings. So, how did we get here?

So, last Tuesday from the middle of the USA we caught a 6AM flight for Chicago using AA frequent flyer miles. Arrived promptly at 7:40AM. Next flight scheduled for 6:55PM, so off to the Blue line train, and a day of shopping (mostly looking) on Michigan Avenue, 30 minutes in... train stopes, a broken English male announces we have a medical emergency on the track ahead of us, buses are available to take you around the emergency. We stay on train, about an hour later we clear medical emergency... Lunch at the Cheesecake factory... need to exchange Title nine tights the wife bought for the cruise, so off to the Title Nine store. they have the tights and exchanged, we tell the clerk about the medical emergency. She tells us that someone jumped in front of the train, she recounts when she lived in San Francisco, and she was on a train that someone jumped in front of, horrible.. Retrace train rides to O'Hare. Go thru security. Go to the gate where the flight to Paris is to leave. Have time for dinner, eat at some Tex Mex place with a couple of ladies flying to Tampa, who say all of this persons restaurants are amazing... it wasn't but we managed to have something like a Po'Boy and Guacomole and 3 glasses of wine (2 for me and 1 for my wife) spending $75... sigh.

Back to gate, nearby, get on plane. 6:55PM, we should be taking off, pilot comes on the intercom, we have a maintenance situation, it is not a big deal, but we have to wait until maintenance signs off all is good. Hour passes... pilot comes on we have to refuel now, another 30 minute wait. Finally we take off. We are on a crappy 763, I think, and it has no in seat entertainment, just random overhead screens (this is economy)... I have wine from a plastic jug and dinner, we settle in for the flight, it is uncomfortable, and I can not sleep, so I watch a bad movie "Antman".

I am getting older, really uncomfortable night. Did sleep a bit. Unfortunately, when I finally got asleep well, they wake us up to serve us some crappy cold food. My wife asked for coffee, and they brought it but they had no cream. Awesome. We get off plane an hour and a half later at CDG.

Next flight on Easy Jet, fortunately I booked my $100 flight two adults with luggage, with time to spare, so we get from the AA terminal to the Easy Jet terminal, in the same general section. in about 20 minutes after going thru immigration (hardly looked at us) but only two lines EU and other passengers, we went thru EU line because it was mostly other.

When we got to Easy Jet, they said we couldn't check in until noon, so we killed an hour on a sofa... checked in relatively easy, DW had to stick her small purse in her backpack in order to clear security. Through security, I bought a sandwich and a salad at the only only eating place in that building. Not bad but certainly not good...

Waited our two hours, and did the chaos oriented Easy JEt loading.

Long long taxi to the runway, and we are finally off to the Czech Republic... land get luggage fairly quickly. Walk out to find our transport, a car service I booked online for about 19USD. See the young man with the sign with our name and two others, as we approached another man introduced himself to our driver. We walk up and I tell him we are on the second name on the list. The third name is a Richard Milner, I see wandering around waiting people with another man holding a placard with the name Richard Milner... we wait at least 20 minutes, and what appears to be the last people on our flight coming thru from baggage claim, there is an odd little man whistling, my wife says that has to be him, sure enough.. Richard Milner comes up to our young man, whom I have tipped off appears to have booked multiple car hires to Prague.... We all walk out to the car/van, and Richard Milner starts telling the young man (who doesn't know much English) his troubles with the companies web page.. probably the other companies web page....

We are the second stop in the old town, the man ahead of us got off first. We are tired...

We get off in front of the Gradior Hotel Prague... our hotel... Booked on hotwire for $62 when I booked I thought it was the Intercontinental (it was almost as nice). I have used hotwire a lot over the last decade, but only when we are there for just a short time. The hotel on the inside is lovely and beyond. Our room is small but really nice. We are very pleased... go out on our balcony and take pics of the road in front of hotel. It is dark... We go down to the concierge and there are lots of conferences in town including our hotel. She recommends a restaurant and gets a table held for us, under the conditions that we leave by 8PM when the restaurant is sold out. No problem I tell her, we want to eat and go to bed. The dinner was really good(will update the details when we return home). I had a lamb shank, my wife had a Sous Vide duck breast, and we shared a fried goat cheese and beat salad. Truly Yum Yum.... being exhausted, we pushed on after dinner to the Old town Hall, and the famous Astronomical clock, we missed the 8PM saints tour... I tried to buy a Gelato at a large nice hotel next to the church, but they didn't accept, dollars, Euros or Credit cards.... so I had to pass that buy. We went off to bed. I wanted a shower, so I got into the bathroom, could make the bath tub fill but the hand held shower was broken, and I know how to generally make these things work, but not this one... So, I took a sponge bath and washed my hair roughly under the tub filler...

Next AM (slept pretty well), we hopped out of bed, and the night before I check in I verified we did have breakfast included (despite booking on Hotwire). So, we give them our room number and have a very awesome breakfast.

More to come...

jc

Sounds like getting there was not half the fun! Yuck.

Hello xpcdoojk,

it is the small town Miltenberg with an e and I admit to my shame that I have never been there.

Your report makes me glad that I do not have to fly to river cruise ports...

Having said that, I certainly found the train trip to Passau to board the ship not relaxing. I travelled second class on a Friday and promptly the train barely made it in time to Würzburg to get me connection. You look at the watch constantly and wait for another announcement. The return journey was worse... another Friday ... decided to travel first class if I ever have to go on a Friday again.

I hope the ship and the trip are as good as you want them to be, and better. :)

notamermaid

So, sitting in the Rhein/Rhine at Boppard, watching the news...there are street musicians in the lounge playing violins, they are amazing according to Isabel the Tour director. We skipped.

So, finished breakfast at the Gradior Hotel in Prague, and we leave the hotel at just after 9AM local, so, we walk to Wencelas Square, which was an easy walk. I explained to my wife what happened there in 1968 as a friend of mine, a neurosurgeon, family fled Czechoslavakia after this event. They were lucky.

We wandered the length of the square and then guessed the way to the Town Hall and the astronomical clock. Ok, I lied, my iPhone lead the way, but we found it. We circled the old town hall looked at the street performers the carriages the tourists, took lots of pictures and reappeared in front of the hotel and the gelato bar (not open) to watch the clock. I filmed it. It was over pretty quick, pretty fascinating, but not really worth the time or effort, but still pretty cool. Since it was now 10, we headed off back to the hotel, stopped at a grocery store, bought some proscuitto, cheese, salad, bread and water at a grocery store. Ate our stuff and packed our stuff. Had the front dest book us a cab to the InterContinental Hotel where Avalon was based. Earlier I had sent the reception at the Avalon Visionary, an email, asking if the time to meet was 1PM or some other time. The only way I knew that was because it said on their pre-booking itinerary leave the InterContinental after lunch. I never got an email, but the girl on the ship when we arrived was relieved, but I never got her email she supposedly sent me. We arranged for the cab at 12 noon, we arrived at the InterContinental at 12:23PM. There were two sets of luggage, so i start asking the people sitting outside which was the group going to the ship as obviously, one set was from the ship.

I went into the hotel, and found an older lady at the Avalon desk but she had no clue what to do with me or for me, so I went back outside and some of the passengers pointed out a younger lady and I talked to her, she told me to put my luggage in the correct place, and I asked when we were leaving, she said boarding at 12:45PM (the buses were there already) and leave at 1PM. So we went to take pictures of the Bridges and buildings for 5 minutes and were among the first to board. The young lady was not our tour director. She just works the Prague portion of the operation.

On the bus, a young German lady from Bamberg tells us that it is a 4 hour drive (traffic allowing) and that we would stop for a pit stop near the German border. Traffic wasn't bad so we made it in 3hours 45 minutes with a 20 minute stop.

We didn't see a thing of Nuremberg. Other than the Main canal loop we were parked in. All four buses were there within a span of 20 minutes. We were in our cabin 5 minutes after arriving our luggage was in our rooms within 30 minutes.

Isabel, is a tough tour director, a by the books kind of German lady. I am not a fan, but she is efficient. She waves to a group that joined in Budapest, they are 8 older ladies, who really don't seem to join in with the new arrivals (they still really haven't 5 days in...). We head off to dinner. Food has been good, since it is a wine appreciation cruise I have had zero desire to order any drinks on the ship. I have a coupon for a free drink for being a past sailor with Avalon, and I still haven't used them.

More to come.

jc

Bon Voyage, XP

Ok, We are back. I have been up to my A$$ in alligators at work since the return, but I will finish up the review shortly. A teaser we were in Paris the day after the attack, and I know the many of the people on the cruise were there during the time of the attack. I have heard from a couple of my fellow cruisers that they made it home safely.

Good trip.

More to follow

jc

Jeepers! Welcome home - too close! Good luck with the alligators and looking forward to your review.