France is not as it should be

The Welcome dinner was hosted by Cara, the cruise consultant. Unusually, she had invited a mixture of 'high Venetians' (our 2 Brits) with a lot of days and four people (USA and Australia) who had never cruised before. The mixture worked well, the only problem being that the tables in Indochine are rectangular rather than round, which makes it difficult to conduct a general conversation. The subject of Brexit was raised but fortunately everybody was sympathetic.

TSH and Diva spent a pleasant morning wandering the streets of Marseilles, finishing along the side of the Marina, before returning to the Silver Spirit for lunch.

The captain announced that because of rough seas to come, it would not be possible to run the tender service to St Tropez. The call was therefore cancelled and the new destination was to be Cannes. 24 hours later, the forecast has worsened, Cannes is cancelled and the call will be to Antibes.

All hail to Lady Hale and her colleagues!!!

Gaudi

TSH and Diva had pre-booked tickets for two of the Gaudi-designed houses - La Pedrera and Casa Batllo. The first of these was the most enjoyable, as the visit was early in the day, whereas Casa Batllo was very crowded and the stairs very steep. The roof-top on La Pedrera must be one of the most spectacular in the world, with its spooky chimneys which look like alien beings.  They certainly felt that they had made the most of their morning and visited two of the city's most famous buildings.

The metro was easy to navigate and the journeys not long.

Lunch provided a magnificent seafood buffet, more excellent salads and a frangipane for Diva. TSH had gorgonzola cheese.

Invitation for tonight for a Venetian Society dinner in Indochine.

A day of two halves

3:45 alarm and 5:00 departure for airport. Travelling is sleepless work!!

The only good part about Manchester Airport Terminal 2 were the exceptionally helpful and cheerful staff, both at the check-in booth (of which more below) and at security. The cafes were all crowded and grubby and Diva was baffled by not being able to order food without a table number when their table, and many others, had no number. The approach to the Gate was down a scaffold staircase and the journey to the plane was by bus. And then the heavens opened. Not friendly Manchester all-day drizzle but a real cloud burst, complete with thunder and lightening.  So by the time anyone made it to the plane, they were soaked. Including inside Diva's open silver sandals. The plane almost ran out of paper towels.

The Jet2 departure was one hour late and the experience gave a whole new meaning to 'cattle class'. Diva sympathised with the cabin steward, who had great difficulty in persuading one passenger to close his device for take-off and landing. He had to tell him the rules a great number of times.

On arrival at the cruise terminal, TSH and Diva quickly entered the luxury world of Silver Spirit. They didn't make the target 'lunch at 1' but by 14:00 were in La Terazza eating excellent salads, including a particularly good one with pineapple. No events at the drill, as Diva decided not to test the torch or the whistle. In an excellent example of nominative determinism, the butler, from Ghana, is called Bright.

New York strip-steak (Diva) and sea-bass (TSH)  for dinner, after 'my little allotment' starters on the special Silver Spirit plates.

TSH, who, in fairness, has a cold, excelled all day. He put the boarding cards for the return flight (for almost a month's time!!) into the folder for 'outward travel' so that a long delay was caused at the check-in booth whilst he searched for the 'inward travel' file. On arrival in Barcelona, the automatic password reader proved challenging and there was another hold-op for a while. 

Commiserations to all at Thomas Cook who helped to arrange this holiday and many others.

To Amsterdam and finish

The final day was spent sailing through the flatlands of the Netherlands, with windmills as the main attraction. At Kinderdijk, a World Heritage site, there are 19 historic windmills. TSH went on a walking tour of some of the windmills, including visiting one that at one time had housed a family of 15 people.

The word amongst the Embla passengers is that the Danube below Budapest is still closed to help with the search for the bodies of the people drowned in the recent collision. Hence ships such as the Viking Lif cannot go south and also cannot go north because of the high water. It is rumoured that passengers have decided to abandon their cruises and return home.

The infrastructure of the Danube/Main/canal/Rhine is not really capable of supporting the amount of traffic it has attracted. A victim of its own success.


The holiday was completed with the KLM flight from Amsterdam to Manchester.

Cologne

The city is dominated by the twin towers of its famous cathedral. However, surprisingly, it also has a lot of Roman ruins, which are to be incorporated into a new museum combining Roman and Jewish cultures. The centre of the city has many stolpersteins, brass plaques in the pavements commemorating those who were killed by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

After having an organised tour in the morning Diva and TSH went back into the town centre on foot. This involved walking across the bridge that also carried all of the railway tracks into the station, giving TSH another train photo opportunity. The bridge was festooned with padlocks attached by people who then threw the keys into the river.

The Viking Elba is now sailing through the Netherlands. Flat but no windmills yet.

A few technical problems on the ship. Two power cuts. One whilst TSH was in the shower. No water. Later, general problem with toilets, although that was fixed relatively quickly.

To Cologne

The Embla is now on the Rhine, which is both wider and busier than the Main.  The gorge provided many views of castles which are now either ruins or hotels. Castles thus became as plentiful as churches. TSH also noted that there were railways running along both sides of the river, so the camera was kept busy.

There was a stop for a visit to Marksburg Castle. The weather is much warmer now and Diva was most unimpressed at the climb to the castle in the afternoon heat. She returned to the bus and was very careful to get on one marked with the correct ship, as there were several Viking groups at the castle. When unfamiliar faces started appearing on the bus, she knew that they were on the wrong bus and explained this to them. It turned out that the sign on the bus had been changed whilst she was on there, so she had the humiliation of a group of people explaining to each other that the woman ‘was on the wrong bus’.

TSH thought the visit to the castle was ok but was probably more interesting to people coming from countries where no old castles existed. He would have preferred to stay on the ship to Koblenz and spend time there. This was another occasion when Viking dropped off an excursion from one point and picked them up from another, reducing flexibility for returning to the ship early or late.

There is now a member of Reception staff dedicated to TSH’s cap, which he has so far lost 3 times. Each time, he has thought his holiday to be over and each time he has been very relieved when his personal ‘lost and found’ officer returned it to him. Note from TSH – The story on the cap has had a certain amount of poetic licence added by Diva.

Wertheim

This was the most picturesque town so far – narrow cobbled streets and attractive old buildings. TSH and Diva walked back to the Embla along the riverside.

There is still a great party atmosphere on shore – everyone drinking beer and waving.

Dinner was a ‘typical’ German buffet., although modern-day Germans probably eat the same international food as the rest of us. There was a galley visit afterwards. It is very small and the staff of only 12 are working miracles with such a good variety of food produced in such a small space. Tiny compared with the galley on even the smallest (300 guests) ocean cruise ship. There are about 200 passengers on the Embla.

Maths went better – all correct today.