We’ve made friends! Two lovely American ladies – long time buddies, great travel mates – introduced themselves to us on one of the walking tours and we loved them for it. Tres elegant and softly spoken these ladies were well travelled and even though they were super friendly to us, they had bonded with so many others on board they had a host of dinner mates who vied for their attention at the table each night so still Geoffrey and I sat alone.
But it was all so very good – and if sitting with your husband for dinner on board a luxury river boat eating duck, seafood and chocolate cheesecake each night is hardship then I will be lining up for more. Everything is cooked on board Amadolce, including all the breads. Chefs get up at 3am to prepare everything and nothing is brought on board frozen.
We entered the Rhine Gorge and sailed down a stretch of the river in one afternoon with – ready for it? – more than 30 castles. Beautiful old castles, many of them in use as tourist attractions, a lot of them vacant, all with fascinating history, none of which I can tell you know because even though I was lazing on a sun lounge up on the sun deck watching the castles go by and listening to Cruise Director Maddy give a full commentary of the castles’ histories, I couldn’t take it all in. Could you have? Enough to say, it was castle overload and I loved it.
By now we had been through dozens and dozens of lochs and each one was a nice experience- going down into the loch while the water pumped in, or going up while it was being pumped out. It was all part of the river cruise experience and we loved it.
We stopped in fairy tale villages with names you may not know: Cochem, Koblenz, Rudesheim, and then big towns youuu will know: Mainz, Frankfurt, and on to so-pretty-it-hurt villages of Miltenber and Wertheim. Cute little half-timbered houses, little cobbled streets, quaint shops and always, always…flowers. Summer time flowers in little German villages are everywhere.
