A Brief and Wet Visit in Cologne

 We thought we had beaten the Weather Gods and AccuWeather, when we had breakfast in the morning. The sun was shining, and it looked like a lovely warm-ish day.

For some reason we had been given a docking spot a good walking distance from the Cathedral, so we would be using buses to get us to our tour downtown. So off we all went, and not five minutes after we had organized our groups and set off toward the Cathedral, it started to rain. By the time we got into some shelter where our guide could start giving us some history, it was pouring. And it continued to pour for almost the entire tour.

Needless to say, we weren't able to take too many photos! When the rain let up a bit, we walked through parts of the old town.

The Fish Market, and some of the
older buildings

One of the old town gates

Outside of one of the breweries. There is
a particular beer here called Kölsch. If
the same beer is brewed on the other side of the
river it can't be called that any more. It has to 
be made within the city walls.

A fountain depicting characters from 
the poems of a famous Cologne poet

In one corner, our guide pointed out the bronze statues of a couple of well-known comedy figures, Tünnes und Schäl, whose act is done entirely in the local Cologne accent. That means that a lot of the jokes don't translate very well. Apparently, if you rub Tünnes's (on the left) nose and toe at the same time, you'll come back to Cologne; that's why they're both so shiny. Our guide says there's no truth to that, it was just a tour guide trying to get people to do something silly and it caught on.

There's a little bar/restaurant right beside the
statues

Oh, look, the rain stopped long enough
to get at least one photo!

There was an option to go for a Kölsch Beer with Razvan after the tour, but since we were wet and didn't know if the rain would ever stop, we decided to go back to the ship instead.

Of course, you know what happened. As soon as we stepped back off the bus, the sun came out, and it turned into a very nice afternoon. We were even able to sit on the sun deck, which had been opened in time for Castle Ping Pong on Thursday.

We left Cologne in the late afternoon, bound for Amsterdam, and a little while later we sailed past Düsseldorf.

There always seemed to be something going on at mealtime - we're going to have to walk and swim for an hour each day for two weeks to work it all off!

Dessert at lunchtime. We didn't usually have it, but
this Oreo Cheesecake looked too good to resist.
Our pastry chef, Igor, doesn't actually like sweets,
but he's a wizard at making them!

The regional specialty at dinner was Sauerbraten with
Red Cabbage and Potato Dumplings. It was all delicious!

The Chocolate Buffet for dessert....

....and more..

A close-up. Igor showed us a photo of the
ship's wheel he had been creating for this
buffet, but it had broken and had to be replaced.
It would have been spectacular!

After dinner we sat outside and watched the developing sunset for a while. The best colours were actually at about 10:30, when we took the last 2 pictures from our stateroom window.

The cruise is slowing coming to an end. Tomorrow we will be near Amsterdam, in Utrecht, where we'll leave to visit the Floriade. The ship will pick us up again in Zaandam and we'll sail into Amsterdam for a 7:30 p.m. arrival.

Castle Ping Pong on the Rhine

 After leaving Rüdesheim, we immediately started seeing castles on the left side and the right side of the river. Since Roman times, rivers served as borders, and the Romans had managed to move quite far north on the European rivers.

Once the Romans were finished with all those fortifications, the counts and kings and prince electors took them over and rebuilt many of them to include large castles along with the fortresses. We also heard about many legends associated with some of the castles. Taryn is a great storyteller!

Here are photos of most of them. I'll update their names once I can get my map back. I'm writing this in the lounge at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, waiting for our flight home.

 

The Maeuseturm, or Mouse Castle

Ehrenfels Castle

Rheinstein Castle

The town of Assmannshausen

Reichenstein Castle

The town of Bacharach. As has been mentioned
in previous blogs, yes, the family of
Burt comes from here.

Pfalz Castle. Legend says at one time
knights kept their wives there while
they went of to battle, as it is on an island.

Schoenberg Castle

Gutenfels Castle

Many people were waiting to see the fabled Loreley, which is close to the end of 'castle alley'. The Loreley is a 430 ft high cliff at a rather treacherous bend in the river where many ships ran into rocks due to the current and the narrow passageway. German poet Heinrich Heine wrote a poem in 1824 where he called Loreley a siren singing from the top of the cliff while combing her golden hair with a golden comb. The sailors going through the area were so entranced by all of that, that they didn't pay attention to the river ahead of them, crashed against the rocks and perished.

 

Approaching the Loreley

 After Loreley, we had to go in to prepare for the evening, so we missed the last few castles. We did, however, see the Deutsches Eck, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine, while we were eating dinner. It seemed that the whole area below the huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm was set up for a summer festival, as there were tents all around. June 25-26 weekend seemed to be one where everyone, everywhere, was having some kind of a party or 'fest'.

 We were hoping that the weather forecast for Cologne on Friday would be wrong, but AccuWeather in Europe seems to have a better track record than at home.

Our Musical Interlude in Rüdesheim

 Our next to last stop on this cruise was the small town of Rüdesheim am Rhein. Most well-known for its specialty coffee, made with the locally made Asbach Uralt Brandy, we found a couple of other gems of this very old town while we were here.

It turned out that our docking position had been changed as we arrived, and we ended up a good 15 minute walk from the old town. But that didn't pose much of a problem; in fact, it was a good thing, as we were able to walk off at least a bit of our lunch.

Once we left the bus, our first destination was Siegfried's Mechanische Musikkabinett, or Siegfried's Mechanical Musicbox Museum. Firstly, it is in a restored  castle dating back to the 1300s, and secondly, we were all amazed at what he had collected in this museum.

Siegfried loved old music boxes of any size, and in the 1960s he started collecting them. The most impressive ones we saw were a Hupfeld Violina Orchestra and a Weber Maestro, both of which had many different instruments playing under the direction of a paper roll a la player piano.

We did also see a player grand piano, and watched as it played a beautiful composition by Franz Liszt, the Liebestraum.

A display outside of the castle

The Weber Maestro. It sounds like a 
whole orchestra!

The oval sections on top open to show multiple
violins that have 'fingers' pressing on the
strings to produce certain notes. Amazing!!!

This piano can be played like a regular
grand or can be set as a player piano.

We were fascinated by some of the things we saw, and amazed at the ingenuity that managed to get these instruments to play by themselves.

After our visit to Siegfried's, we walked the few metres, literally, to the Rüdesheimer Schlosshotel where we were given a 4-course lunch complete with a German band for entertainment. As soon as they started playing, we were both reminded of parties at Monica's parent's house, and the CDs they used to play. It was a great meal.

Chicken Schnitzel came after salad and
potato cream soup

And in between courses, some of us were dragged out to help the band play Edelweiss on the cowbells.

Resistance was futile, and I ended up with the big bell to start the song. Good thing we had a conductor.

It was a lot of fun, and they let us go back to our tables for dessert and Rüdesheimer Kaffee when we were done.

There we were, helping the band!

Apple cake and vanilla sauce for dessert

And the crowning touch, Rüdesheimer Kaffee

Our Tauck team gave us all tickets to take the Seilbahn, or cable car, up to the monument outside of Rüdesheim, the Niederwald Denkmal. This monument was built in the late 1800s to commemorate Prussia's victory in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. It is a huge statue, easily visible from the river. We were last there in December 2017 when we visited on the Christmas Markets cruise. At that time, there was at least one Santa Claus riding the cable cars along with the visitors.

After leaving Rüdesheim, we set off to play 'Castle Ping-Pong' up the Middle Rhine Gorge.

Who Ever Heard of a Sea Day on a River Cruise?

Yes, we actually had a full day of sailing scheduled for today! But a couple of days earlier, Tour Director Taryn put together an 'Adventure' for anyone who wanted to go along. It sounded interesting, but when the numbers got over 20, we thought it might be a bit unwieldy to keep track, so we stayed on board and got caught up with a few things, like the blog, and just watched the river go by. We couldn't be up on the sundeck as it was still closed for low bridges, but the Panorama Lounge was always available.

In the morning, when we let the adventurers off the boat at Wertheim, a local glass artist came on board to give us a glass blowing demonstration, and, of course bring some of his art to sell. We were amazed that he could actually do this on the ship, but it worked very well, and he made a Christmas ornament and a candle holder that he gave to some guests.

After he left the ship at the next lock, it was just sailing along the river and going through more locks, and sailing, and locks, etc. On the whole cruise we are going through something like 68 locks, with 64 of them on the Danube-Main-Rhine Canal.

In Rothenburg yesterday we bought a local specialty called a 'Schneeball' or snowball, that Razvan recommended we try. It's hard to describe, but it tastes like shortbread with a flavoured cream like in sandwich cookies, in this case lemon, running through it. The only way this could have been baked, and it definitely wasn't deep-fried, was for the strips to be baked, coated in the cream, cut into strips and rolled up all before the shortbread could set. I'll have to look up the recipe sometime. I had no time to eat it yesterday, so I sat outside of Arthur's on the back deck and ate part of it.

We picked our adventurers back up in Miltenburg and continued on our way.

Tonight was the Grand Gala Dinner that started off with Portuguese Oysters on the half-shell. We thought they were okay, quite large and a bit chewy and very briny. They were served at Cocktail Hour.

Dinner consisted of 6 courses, with 3 wine pairings. It was delicious, and nothing was too large, but we were still full when we left the table.

Smoked Duck Breast

Porcini Essence Soup

Seared Scallop

Land and Sea - Beef Tenderloin and Grilled Shrimp,
and no that wasn't white asparagus, just
potato puree

Flambee Creme Brulee for
Dessert

Served with Petits Fours

It was all most of us could do to get up to the forward outside deck to watch the river go by.

Another lovely day with lots of food and not much exercise. We will be in Ruedesheim tomorrow.