So You Want to Cruise? Helpful Hints For the First-Timer

Cruising is an awesome way to get to know a little bit about multiple destinations in a region, and help you decide where you might enjoy a longer return visit. It's also a wonderful way to travel generally.

 

I've posted some general thoughts on this subject before, but I've learned a lot more since then about the whole business of cruising. What I am mainly sharing here are things which you might not consider before choosing and booking a cruise, especially if you're a newcomer to cruising.

[1]  Travel Agents

 

First and foremost: if you are going to use a travel agent (strongly recommended for the newcomer to cruising), make sure you choose one who specializes in the cruise biz. Booking a cruise is a highly specialized process, and a specialist agent will have the facts, figures, and sources of information all lined up to help you even before you begin. I've been told that a travel agent can often get you a better fare than you could get by booking yourself. I have yet to verify that myself. I'm stubborn that way.

[2]  Timing is Everything

To get a good value-for-money fare, you absolutely need to cruise in off-season times. These vary depending which region of the world you are going to cruise in, but they most certainly do not include the Christmas and spring break school holiday periods. Caribbean cruises over those holiday times are among the most expensive of all, measured on a cost per day basis. The same principle applies to Alaskan cruises in July and the first half of August.

Proof: I've just come off a 16-day trans-Atlantic cruise. In a few months, I'll be doing a 15-day Panama Canal cruise. Last year, I had booked (and then cancelled) a 10-day Mexican Riviera cruise over New Year's (December 27 to January 6). The cancellation 100% credit from that 10-day cruise paid for all of the Panama cruise, and about 40% of the Atlantic voyage. In effect, I got 20 days of cruising from the cost of a 10-day peak holiday period cruise.

 

[3]  Where to Cruise? 

 

Here, of course, it's all about your interests. Beaches? Caribbean or Hawaii. Natural wonders? Alaska or Iceland/Norway. History? Europe, either north or south. Lots of time at sea? Voyages across any major ocean.

 

[4]  Which Cruise Line? 

 

You absolutely need to pick a cruise line based on its style. They are not all the same by any means, even if they look like they are at first glance.

 

To give a few examples: Carnival has a well-deserved reputation as a provider of hyperactive, whoop-it-up, fun vacations for all. Disney -- well, it's Disney. Nuff said. Princess (my personal favourite) is a classic kind of cruise, more laid back and leisurely. Holland America has gone in for quite a specialization on different types of music, and I may give them a try on that basis. Cunard is more elegant, and more dressy as well. And so on. This is where a travel agent can be a huge help, but you can also learn a lot by visiting sites where cruise passengers share their reviews and reactions.

[5]  All-Important: Picking Your Cabin 

Even people who say, "Oh, I never spend any time in my cabin," actually do. Unless they're spending the whole voyage sleeping in the cabins of one or more other people, of course. The key rule for picking a cabin, to get a good sleep, is to make sure that there are cabins above you, below you, either side of you, and across the hall from you. Also, one more firm rule: no cabins with connecting doors to another cabin unless your party is also occupying that connecting cabin.

There are cheaper cabins that don't follow those rules: above the nightclub (horrible if you're the early-to-bed type), under the pool deck (deadly if you're not a morning person), adjacent to the elevators, right beside the laundromat (you can learn some interesting multilingual swear words here), or (a sneaky one, this) right across the hall from the uptakes where the engine exhaust rises on its way from the engine room to the smokestacks -- that can get noisy when the ship is cruising at high speed.

The stern: there are often some lovely cabins with stern views over the wake. The problem: in rough weather, the stern rises up over a wave, the propellers get into a mass of foam instead of solid water and can't bite into it, the props speed up, and the vibration for a few moments can get teeth-rattlingly intense. I would especially suggest avoiding the stern on any trans-ocean voyage where heavier weather is more likely.

 

If you are fearful of motion sickness, a good rule is to get onto a lower deck and near to midships.

 

Pitfalls:      [1] Cruise lines may offer you a discount if you let them pick your cabin

                        for you. Don't do it. You might get lucky, but you may very well 

                        end up with a dog's breakfast of noise.

 

                  [2]  Booking at last minute -- they'll offer you a bargain fare to fill 

                        the space, but Pitfall # 1 still applies. At the last minute, you won't 

                        likely get a choice. Be warned. 

In short, you need to look at a lot more than just the one deck where the cabin is located.

 

[6]  About That Laundry: To Scrub or Not to Scrub?

 

Cruise ships generally have laundromats. Cruise ships also generally offer pick-up-and-deliver laundry service from your cabin. My impression is that rates for cabin service laundry are about half what is charged in major hotels ashore. My experience is that cruise ship laundromats can have as many as half their machines out of service at any given moment. One morning, I came out of my cabin at five to eight, and walked down the hall, passing a lineup of four or five grim-faced people determined to make a run for a machine as soon as the laundromat opened at eight o'clock. Since you can easily have to pay the dryer for 3 cycles -- are you really saving money? My advice is simple: you're on holiday, just go with the pick-up-and-deliver. You didn't pay all that money to spend one whole day of the week trapped in the laundry room, just like at home! Of course, on a shorter cruise of one week of less, it's a simple matter to bring enough clothes for the whole trip.

[7]  Tonight We Dress

Back in the so-called "good olde daze," dressing formally for dinner was de rigeuer. Today, a dwindling number of lines follow this principle for all, or certain sections, of the ship. Others, like Princess, still do a couple of formal nights a week, but don't strongly enforce them -- and the buffet is always a casual option. Some just don't do it at all. If you like dressing up to the max, you may well feel more comfortable on a cruise line which continues or encourages this tradition.

[8]  The Fare, or When Is "All-Inclusive" Not Really Included? 

General rule: your fare includes your transportation by ship, your room, your meals, and your entertainment. Everything else will cost you. Everything.

Exceptions: practically every company has different details within that general rule. Some include more in the fare, but charge you more for the privilege. Some cheaper ones may nickel and dime you for every extra, on the ship and ashore at their "private island paradise" in the Caribbean.

 

Some things you can expect to pay extra for: drinks, internet, drinks, premium restaurants, drinks, shore excursions, drinks, some of the flashy theme park attractions on the top decks, and did I mention drinks? In some cases, you can save money by pre-paying those extras before you sail. Check it out.

 

On Princess, my preferred line, the only included beverages are tap water, ordinary tea, ordinary coffee, lemonade, and fruit juice is included at breakfast only. All others cost extra. Now, read that list again. 

 

Cruise fares are getting more complicated all the time. Princess isn't the only line to begin offering a multi-tiered fare program. Just like the airlines, you can pick your fare depending on what you want to have included. I picked a fare which included internet for one device, prepaid "crew incentives" (tips) for the voyage, and free drinks up to $12 per drink. That package saved me money because of my fondness for wine with dinner and cappuccinos at any and all hours of the day.

The bottom line is simple: just like all other businesses, the cruise lines have to pay their bills (fuel not the least of them) and if they don't ding you with the basic fare, they'll have to ding you with the surcharges.

Knowledge is your only weapon. Your best bet is to do some serious research before buying, and make sure you know all the details for whatever cruise line(s) you are considering.

[9]  Getting to the Ship

You can buy flights through the cruise line. You will get the benefit of low prices thanks to their bulk-pricing agreements with major airlines, especially in North America. Some of the routings they come up with can get pretty complicated -- one couple on my last voyage had to fly home to Cleveland from Florida via Houston and Chicago. Or you can buy your own, on the nonstop flight of your choice. Either way, there is one absolutely essential rule -- especially nowadays when so many flights on so many airlines are being cancelled or hugely delayed: 

Book your flight for the day before the ship sails -- or earlier.

 

A traveller's tale to illustrate the point. In 2000, I was sailing on an 18-day adventure cruise from Dover in England to the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Spitsbergen, and the Norwegian fjords. A group of some 15 passengers arriving from Atlanta missed the ship because their flight was delayed. They got put on a flight to Copenhagen and spent a night in a hotel there. The next day they flew to the Faeroe Islands. On Day 3, the ship approached Torshavn in the Faeroes but couldn't land anyone as it was too rough for the ship's boats to take passengers ashore, or vice versa. The gang from Atlanta watched as their ship again sailed away without them, and then were taken back to the airport and flown back to Copenhagen. On Day 4, they flew from  Copenhagen to Reykjavik. There they finally got to join the ship on Day 5. I am not making this up, by the way. In 2000, you could only  get to the Faeroe Islands from Copenhagen. And the reason why I know the whole sad story? One of the unlucky Atlanta gang was seated at our table in the dining room when they finally arrived on the fifth night. 

 

The moral? Book your flight for the day before the ship sails -- or earlier.

[10]  What About River Cruises?

A river cruise is a completely different animal altogether. The only thing it has in common with an ocean cruise is that ships are involved. After that, no comparison. Click on the "river cruises" label in the box of labels on the right-hand side at the top of the page, and you'll find plenty of information in multiple posts about my experiences on two river cruises.

Comparing Two River Cruise Lines

This post is mainly directed to people who are thinking of trying a river cruise and want some idea of what to expect.  That's why I left it out of the numbered series on my travels.

A few days ago, I completed my second European river cruise, and it was with a different company from the first one, last year.  Since these two companies are often mentioned in the same breath as being of comparable quality and service, a comparison of the two is appropriate.  The two lines are Avalon Waterways and AmaWaterways.

Note:  This is only my own personal experience.  Other people would see things from other perspectives, and that's okay too.

First of all, just to mention a few things where there is no substantial difference.

The ships are of virtually identical size, since the size is dictated by the size of the locks and bridges on the rivers in Europe.

Itineraries are comparable, since all cruise companies tend to take in the same destinations, much like what happens in ocean cruising.

Both lines have English as the working language of the cruise, including all crew members' interactions with passengers, and all tour guides on shore.

Both lines give you a room, all meals, free walking tours at every stop, and free wine or beer at lunch and dinner.  Other services such as drinks-any-other-time or laundry cost extra.

In order to maximize port time, much of the sailing takes place at night.  But that's okay because there's no rocking and rolling motion, and the beds were equally comfortable on both companies.

All lines have to moor side by side with other ships from time to time, so passengers may have to walk through another ship to reach the shore or have passengers from another line walking through their ship.

Most important of all, all river cruise lines are at the mercy of the weather, since either too much or too little water in the river can stop the cruise dead in its tracks.

Now, the comparisons:

[1]  The Cabin

In both cases, I had a cabin on the middle deck, with cabins above and below me.  Avalon's cabin is called a "Panorama Suite", and has a total area of 200 square feet.  AmaWaterways' cabin sounds marginally bigger at 210 square feet.  But see the diagrams and photos below.

First, the Avalon cabin.

Avalon Waterways illustrations.

And now the AmaWaterways version.

AmaWaterways illustrations.

Simple truth: the lovely little balcony is a huge thief of space.  It leaves you with barely any room to get out of the double bed without either hitting the wall or the window.  If it's two single beds, the space between them is equally narrow.  The balcony sounds like a wonderful idea, but it's so tiny that you can't do anything except squeeze around the furniture just to get out the door.  There's certainly no room to rearrange the balcony furniture.  And the tiny "Juliet balcony," on the right side of the photo, isn't much good for anything either -- just enough space for one person to stand by the window.  

The Avalon version does away with the balcony, and with another tweak to the basic design places the bed(s) facing the window at a slight angle -- and 2/3 of the entire window can be converted into a "balcony" by sliding back the glass doors.  Now, there's more room to get out of bed on either side, and the shower in the bathroom is just that little bit wider right where it needs to be -- close to the shower head.  As well, Avalon is able to have more storage space in drawers and closets, and still leave room to move around.  Both cabins are tight, but Avalon didn't leave me so conscious of lack-of-space.  And in each case I had the room to myself.

Winner:  Avalon Waterways, because of ingenious and effective use of the limited space.

[2]  Housekeeping Service

Nothing to choose between the two companies here.  Both companies provide thorough, twice-daily housekeeping with waste baskets emptied, beds made or turned down, cleaning service, and replenishing of towels (as requested) and other supplies.

Winner:  Tie.

[3]  Menus

Both companies provide comparable buffets at breakfast  Avalon's lunch buffet was more diverse than on AmaWaterways.  Both companies presented four-course dinner menus, with a single set time for dinner each night (that time could vary, depending on other aspects of the ship's operations).  Food at all meals was comparable for quality, as was the selection of wines.  I'm not a beer drinker, but whether it was wine or beer there was one choice per day.  You got either the red wine, the white wine, or the beer of the day.  The biggest difference was that Avalon used many more regional dishes and regional wines/beers whereas AmaWaterways stuck more to fine dishes and wines/beers, often regardless of the ship's geographic location each day.  Personal preference will dictate your choice here.  

A further note: AmaWaterways offers a small "Chef's Table" restaurant with a seven course tasting menu partnered with appropriate wines -- reservations required, but no extra charge.  I didn't take it in.  Friends who did were impressed with the food quality, preparation and presentation.  However, the advertising made it sound like paired wines would be served with each course, but in practice they told me that the same red and white were used throughout -- although they were more upscale wines than the ones served in the main dining room.  I gather that the Chef's Table serves the same menu each night, so you would likely only do this once in a week-long trip.  This restaurant doesn't enter into my comparison, since I didn't try it myself.

Winner:  Tie.

[4]  Dining Room Service

Avalon's service was outstanding at every point, and the servers made a point of chatting up the customers at free moments.  Partly this was possible because the ship was not completely filled.  No hassles, no glitches, and a good feeling of being welcome guests.

AmaWaterways was a huge disappointment by comparison.  Every day, at either lunch or dinner (or both), something went wrong for me or for one or more of the other people with whom I was sitting.  This included, but wasn't limited to, wrong dishes delivered, dishes with missing ingredients, a couple of servers whose English was so limited that they could barely understand questions asked of them, servers who poured coffee or wine for half the table, and then vanished, leaving the other half hanging, and servers who were too busy chatting with their colleagues to pay attention to their clients.  Let's face it: when a cruise line that leans so heavily on its reputation as a member of the gourmet network, "La chaine des rotisseurs," has poorer service than my local roadhouse chain restaurant at home, something's seriously wrong.

Winner:  Avalon Waterways.  No contest.

[5]  Cruise Directors 

On a river cruise, the cruise director (a combination administrator and concierge) can make or break the entire experience.  Both cruise directors were thorough, attentive, approachable, and helpful -- in short, consummate professionals.  No complaints from me on this critical point.

Winner:  Tie

[6]  Attention to Details

In addition to the daily excursion on foot, Avalon provided some extra excursions to more distant destinations which could be taken for an added fee.  AmaWaterways offered an assortment of daily free excursions, but always relatively close to the ship.  One day we had a bus ride of about an hour to our destination.  Some of Avalon's off-ship bus tours (the extra-cost ones) took a full day, and travelled so far that the bus returned to the ship at a different port from the one where it departed.

Both lines had a nice selection of toiletries, but Avalon surprised me by putting out two complete sets of toiletries in two different scents.  It seemed like an excessive number of little plastic bottles to be slinging around.  Really, it's high time both lines moved to the refillable wall-mounted squeeze bottles of soap, shampoo, body wash, etc., which are so common in Europe's hotels.

AmaWaterways had the all-day coffee machine in an easily-accessed location right off the main lobby.  Avalon's was all the way at the back of deck 3, and involved a lengthy walk for anyone living on deck 1 or 2.   

Both lines provided a narrated commentary during the period of sailing through the Rhine River gorge between Koblenz and Rudesheim.  AmaWaterways' commentary was somewhat more thorough.

Winner: variable, but AmaWaterways wins for most of these items.

[7]  Troubleshooting 

This isn't exactly a comparison, since our AmaWaterways cruise ran right to schedule for the most part.  The Avalon cruise last year was a whole other story, because of the very low water levels.  At one point it looked like we might have to finish the tour by bus -- and, at that point, Avalon promised us a full refund for every night we'd paid for but had to spend off the ship, while still taking us by road to all the scheduled stops and putting us up each night in 5-star or better hotels, with all meals and drinks included, as on the ship.  We did in fact spend one night off the ship, in a good but slightly eccentric hotel, and the refund was on my credit card account less than 24 hours after we got back aboard.  Impressive.  I would certainly hope for comparable attention if I were on an AmaWaterways cruise under similar adverse conditions.

[8]  Booking Your Cruise

For internet-savvy travellers who feel comfortable doing it (me, for instance), Avalon Waterways offers online booking and cabin selection.  AmaWaterways still requires you to phone, or go through a travel agent.

Avalon also allows you to pre-pay your gratuities on line, and I did.  On AmaWaterways, there is no such option (although our gratuities were pre-paid for us by the Canadian travel agency which arranged the entire tour and chartered the ship).

Winner:  Avalon Waterways.  AmaWaterways needs to get with the programme.

[9]  Prices

The two companies have comparable prices for most cruises.  For me, travelling alone, the big question is the accursed "single supplement."  Avalon offers "no single supplement" on many sailings, for a few cabins on each such trip.  That policy saved me over $8,000 dollars on the two-week cruise I took with them last year.  AmaWaterways offers only "reduced single supplement," again only on selected trips -- and it didn't apply to the chartered cruise which I was on this year.

Winner:   Avalon Waterways, as long as they keep offering "no single supplement."

Overall:  Avalon Waterways, because of the room layout, the dining room service, the online booking, and especially because of "no single supplement."  

European Musicruise 2019 # 8: Rained Out With The Bourgs

No less than North America or the British Isles, continental  Europe suffers from a profusion of nearly identical place names.  Case in point: today's scenic tour from the port of Breisach will take us to the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, not to be confused with Freiburg im Sachsen to the east, nor yet with the city and canton of Fribourg across the border in Switzerland -- or the town in France, if it comes to that.  

See what I mean?

At least, the tour would take us there.  But when I looked out this morning and saw the dark cloudy skies and checked the weather forecast which showed 100% chance of rain throughout the day, I  rebelled.  

Truth be told, I was suffering from the ABCs of river cruising.  If you've been following this blog throughout my travels, you may well be feeling the symptoms too.  It works like this, according to the Cruise Director on my river cruise last year.  On Day 1 of a river cruise, the letters A.B.C. stand for:

 "Wow!  What  

A                  

Beautiful       

Cathedral!!!"  

By Day 6 or so, the letters mean: 

"Oh, no, not     

Another    

Bloody      

Church!"   

It's so true.  Freiburg's biggest attraction, in more ways than one, is the tall, shapely spire of its cathedral which has been acclaimed the most beautiful spire in Europe.  Given the weather today, I'm not feeling sufficiently "inspired" to go and stand in the rain, looking at A------ B----- C-----.  I'll just visit Freiburg some other time.  Freiburg im Breisgau, that is.  Here's an internet picture of the city and cathedral spire to tide you over.  It sure wouldn't look this bright today!

At least I can take you back to yesterday when we had a successful and only partially wet tour of Strasbourg.  I've always thought of Strasbourg as primarily a French city, although aware of the mixed Franco-Germanic culture of the borderlands in Alsace.  I was more than a little surprised to learn, yesterday, that Strasbourg has been a German city for most of its lifetime, and only became solidly and definitively French after World War Two.

It was precisely that checkered history, and the need to affirm the unity of the new United Europe of the future, that led to the decision to locate first the Council of Europe, and then the European Parliament in Strasbourg.  This firmly cemented its reputation as an international city.  

As usual, though, our walking tour centred on the older, more historic districts.  I confess to skipping the morning coach tour around the European administration buildings and sticking to just the walk.

There's no such thing as a coach tour of historic Strasbourg.  Tour coaches and most motor vehicles are banned from a large segment of the central city, basically the entire island on which the city centre is located.  Deliveries are allowed for a limited time each morning, and a few streets are available for vehicle access for cars.  There are only two roads across the island with tram services.  Strasbourg has these flashy 7-segment articulated trams and their right of way runs, quite sensibly, down one side of the street instead of right down the middle.

So, not only were we in for a long walk, but our ship had to dock in an industrial harbour area some way to the east of the city centre.  Strasbourg is one of the biggest ports in France, and second biggest on the entire Rhine (after Duisburg in Germany) -- and it shows in the morning view from my cabin.

After we dropped off our coach at the Place de l'Etoile (which isn't star-shaped at all as the name seems to imply -- just a big bus terminal), we started walking and first encountered the original building of the civic hospital, dating from the 1600s.

All those shuttered windows in the roof provided ample ventilation whenever the rivers flooded, and the supplies of food and wine in the cellars had to be carried upstairs.  Incidentally, this hospital still makes and sells its own wine, as it has done ever since the "good old days"| when wine was frequently prescribed for illnesses.  "Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake."  We saw some bottles for sale in several shop windows.

From there, we walked on a bit farther and entered the quaint historic neighbourhood known as "Petite-France."  It is not a complimentary nickname.  Our guide explained that the name became common in the years when Strasbourg was a German town, and the name "petite France" referred to what was called in English "the pox" -- syphilis.  This was a district of butchers and tanners, and the asylums where syphilitics were locked up were put here too.  Those victims, the  lowest of the low, could deal with the stench of the tanneries, as far as most people were concerned.  Today, it's picturesque enough to look like a set for a fantasy movie.

And wouldn't you know ti?  I just can't go anywhere without running into this guy.

We walked on some more, and soon came to two closely-linked squares at the heart of the city: the Place Gutenberg...

 ...with its two-storey carousel...

...and monument to the inventor of the printing press...,

 ...and the adjacent Place de la Cathédrale.

Work was stopped on the cathedral after the north spire was built, because it was feared that the additional weight of the matching south spire would have brought about the collapse of the building.

On the south side of the church, the Place de la Chateau faces the ornate and clearly French Bishop's Palace of 1730 -- now the city's principal art gallery.

Just at this point, the cathedral clock struck twelve and the first spotty drops of rain began to fall.  I found refuge under the awning over a wall with 4 ATMs, and stood there while the skies opened.  For the first time in my life, I actually saw the gargoyles on a cathedral fulfilling the design requirement which made protruding sculptures such as these a valuable asset to the church -- downspouts!

Eventually the rain let up and I was able to make my way to the meeting point for the 15-minute nonstop walk back to the Place de l'Etoile and our buses.  On the way we passed this Irish pub.  In the ordinary way, I would give it no more than a passing glance, but in the company of so many musicians and music lovers, I had to wonder if it was a pub or a music store.  Either way, any musician would certainly need to know if the supertonic was flat!

Soon afterwards, we were back on our coaches and then aboard ship once more.  To add insult to injury, the sun came right out and shone brilliantly during our afternoon concert in the lounge.  Sigh.

Just to keep you up to date, here's the latest map of the cruise with yesterday's visit to Strasbourg and today's indoor port call at Breisach marked in.  Freiburg im Breisgau is a short 35-40 minute bus ride to the east of Breisach.

By bedtime tonight, we will be docked at Basel, the end of the cruise.  Tomorrow morning we have to be off the ship by 0900 to continue our tour by bus to Zurich.

European Musicruise 2019 # 7: Hobbled by the Cobbles in Heidelberg

Thursday's port-of-call for our Rhine cruise was the industrial port of Ludwigshafen, across the Rhine from the better-known industrial port of Mannheim.  There is nothing of particular interest in either city for most tourists, unless you especially enjoy snapping pictures of endless miles of chemical plants (Ludwigshafen is the headquarters of the BASF chemical company).

But these ports are an easy jumping-off spot for the scenic glories of Heidelberg and Speyer.  With a choice of tours, I opted for Heidelberg, little suspecting what I was in for.

Remember when I posted pics of the cobblestones in Prague and thought those were rough work to walk on?  Well, in Heidelberg, the average height difference between adjacent cobblestones runs in the neighbourhood of 2-3 cm.  Up at the ruins of Heidelberg Castle, the height difference grows to 5 cm or more -- sometimes much more.  I've twisted my ankle in the past over curbs that were lower than those cobblestones!

By the end of the day, my bad knee was screaming insults at me in languages I didn't even realize I knew, and my walk from the bus back to the ship displayed a hefty limp that occasioned some comment at dinner time.  (it's better today).

However, I'd have to say that it was worth it.  I've rarely seen a ruined castle that has so much still standing.  So here we go.  First shot: a view of the ruins from the main square of the town below.

Once our bus had climbed the snaky little road to the crest of the hill, we walked through this gateway into the gardens of the castle.

We then enjoyed a half-hour walk around the extensive ruins.  The castle was reduced to ruins when this part of the Palatinate was invaded by France during the War of the Grand Alliance and the War of the Palatinate Succession.  Thank you, Louis XIV.  I bet he was just jealous because the setting was so much more spectacular than the tiny little fake hills he had to build at Versailles.

Wait a minute -- those are actual windows, aren't they?

Yes, they are.  In the 1700s and early 1800s, work had begun to restore the structures.  This restoration had progressed as far as the central block of the seventeenth-century palace wing before the arrival of the Romantic movement in art and literature, which decreed that a decomposing ruin was just as splendid and evocative as a newly-completed building.  The palace as it stands, with all of its elaborate sculptural decorations, is still very impressive.

If you go down the steep and roughly cobbled path to the arch under the tower at the right side of the palace, you can descend into the vaulted cellars to view the most remarkable artifact of Heidelberg Castle: the Great Vat.

The largest single oaken wine cask every built, this monster barrel was filled only once -- and began to leak, because of its sheer size, before it was even close to half-full.  In a nearby recess stands this relatively small (even trivial, by comparison) earlier effort.

However, before we get all excited about the potential for swimming in wine at the greatest drunken party of all time, we must remember that wine in those days was heavily diluted with water and then sweetened with various other substances, and therefore didn't have nearly as much of a kick as the wines we know today.

Pity.

At several different points there are terraces which give spectacular views of the town of Heidelberg and the Neckar River far below.  In one picture, you will see a dam and a lock.  Yes, the Neckar River is navigable, but the locks are too old and small to be used by modern river cruise ships -- and the cost to enlarge them would far exceed any potential benefit to the area.

You can hike down the hundreds of steps from the castle to the main area of town if you like.  After climbing up that brutal cobbled ramp from the Great Vat, I (or my knee, to be precise) did not like.

Fortunately, our tour included a relatively easy ride down the hill in the funicular, which brought us to the town centre in 90 seconds.  About a minute's walk then led us to the first of two sizable squares, the Corn Market.  The pillar in the middle of the square is crowned by a Virgin and Child which was placed here as an instructive warning to any stubborn Protestants, during one of the periods when the town was controlled by Catholics during the endless wars of religion.

From there, it was a short further walk to the Town Hall Square, home of the Church of Our Lady.  This church is a perfect representation of the endless religious flip-flops in Heidelberg's history.  With a form of dedication which is almost always used for Catholic churches, the coolly austere interior is the epitome of Lutheran (or even Calvinist) belief, right down to the lack of pictorial images in most of the windows.

I sat and stared in fascination at the apse end of the church, trying to analyze the peculiar pattern of the tracery in the roof, since I'd never seen anything quite like it before.  I finally figured out the secret.  The inner rank of arches takes 5 arches to form the semi-circular bay at the east end of the church, but the outer wall uses eight windows in eight arches to cover the same semi-circle.  It's no wonder the roof tracery looks symmetrical, yet somehow cockeyed at the same time.

To cap off my visit, I walked down to the bank of the river, which is lined with some lovely old hotels, in order to get a closer look at the old sandstone bridge and its gate tower.

Here's where I took my daily "Kilroy-was-here" moment.

I also climbed up onto the bridge, and discovered, to my amusement, that the lovelock craze has even spread here, although on a much smaller scale -- it's hard to find a place to anchor them!

European Musicruise 2019 # 6: The Magical, Mystical Rhine

So, on the fourth day of our seven-day cruise, this happened.  At a first glance, would you guess that Schloss Engers at Neuwied was one of the minor palaces of the Prince-Archbishop of the Rhineland-Palatinate?

The Prince-Archbishop built this little shack in the woods because he needed a place where he could go for a few weeks of quiet enjoyment each fall during the hunting season.  This helps to explain why the ceiling of the Diana Hall features a large-scale fresco painting of the goddess who was known as the Virgin Huntress, Diana.

Today, Schloss Engers is the home of the Villa Musica, a mentorship programme for young musicians just starting out in their careers, to have the experience of playing and sharing music with more senior musician mentors.  We were brought here from our ship to enjoy a concert given by several of the current scholarship holders of the Villa Musica, together with one of our tour's resident musicians, clarinetist James Campbell.

The music audiences of today enjoy privileges formerly reserved for royalty and archbishops.  And the concert was delightful.

That actually came at the end of our morning tour in the city of Koblenz, at the junction of the Rhine and Mosel Rivers.  I'm sorry to say that our morning walking tour completely skipped the most famous sight in Koblenz, the gigantic equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I at the Deutsches Eck, the angle of land between the two rivers.  But here's a picture of him from last year's cruise.

Instead, our tour took us through the old town area, again (as in Cologne) largely rebuilt after the war.  Unlike many of these cobblestoned squares, this one had some substantial trees shading it.

This sixteenth century building at one time served as a synagogue for the Jewish community.  It was significant that our guide took care to outline the long and difficult history of the Jewish population in Koblenz, before telling us that today the city has a Jewish community again and living in better circumstances than at any time in the past. 

This church's wildly varying architectural styles (check the different shapes of the windows) reflects a history of having been built piecemeal over several centuries.

A former Jesuit church and school is now used as part of the town hall.  The 24 shuttered windows in the roof are opened one by one in December as a community Advent calendar.

In the courtyard through the arch of the town hall stands this fountain.  The sassy boy atop the column has become a famous symbol of Koblenz.  Just be careful where you stand because every few minutes....

In a larger square nearby, the city commissioned this column, a depiction of the history of Koblenz by eras, beginning with the Romans at the bottom and ending with the rebuilding of the city after World War 2 at the top.  I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I am quite sure that it's unique.

We got back from our concert at Schloss Engers at 12:15, and lunch was at 12:30 -- so we were all tucking into our meal as the ship sailed, from its berth in the Mosel, sliding around the corner back into the Rhine (we did wave at Wilhelm through the windows of the dining room).  We were now heading into the most famous and scenic stretch of the entire voyage: the Rhine Gorge.  

The river is compressed in between steep hills, many crowned with castles, and in places the stream is so narrow that the current becomes decidedly fast.  Check out how hard the current is pushing against the buoy in this video clip.

Nothing sums up the speed of the river through the gorge so much as the fact that the voyage upstream from Koblenz to Rüdesheim took us 6.5 hours.  Last summer, we sailed the same stretch downstream in less than 4 hours.

I've been through the gorge twice before, in 1979 and in 2018, but both times my photography was somewhat frustrated by bad weather.  Well, we had some of that today as well, but we also got some bright sunny conditions as the afternoon wore on, and I finally managed to get some good bright pictures of some of the nearly 30 castles along this twisting waterway.  So here's a selection of photos of some of the highlights -- beginning with the castles.

This pair of castles, one white and one dark, with a wall separating them, are known as the Feindlichen Brüdern ("Enemy Brothers").  I'm not sure if that's due to anything more than appearances.

And the prize of the lot: at last, some sunny pictures of Pfalzgrafstein on its island in the river.  The first time I sailed through here, the water was right up to the castle walls, proving the wisdom of that pink ship's-prow at the end facing upstream -- complete with lion figurehead.

The Rhine Gorge is a very busy transportation corridor.  There's the nonstop stream of cargo ships and passengers cruise vessels going up and down the river -- and ferries across the river, too, as there are no bridges anywhere between Koblenz and Rüdesheim.

That passenger vessel is a twin sister of the one I cruised on last summer.  There are also highways along both banks of the river, and dual-track railways on each side too.  Here, the rail lines on the eastern shore have to go through a headland in twin tunnels.

The rail line on the east side carries mostly cargo trains, with a few local-service passenger trains each hour.

The west bank carries one of the country's major InterCity passenger lines, with lengthy express trains racing by on a regular basis.

Although all of the scenery in the Gorge is both beautiful and spectacular, the scenic climax comes at the midpoint, just south of the twin towns of St. Goar and St. Goarshausen on either bank.  First, you see this graceful statue of a mysterious woman on the eastern shore.

In another minute, you approach the prominent, steep headland which bears her name.  This is the Loreley Rock.  In German mythology, the Loreley (also sometimes spelt Lorelei) was a deathless nymph who lived atop the rock and enticed sailors to their deaths with her enchanting song.  Sound familiar?  The idea of immortal women driving mortal men to distraction and death is a common theme in more than a few mythologies around the world.  Take a look at the sharp bends which carry the river around this frowning promontory, and remember that current, which is especially fierce and turbulent here.

But also take a look at the headland's rock formations, testimony to an active geological past.  Really, it hardly needs the old and frankly sexist legend to make the Loreley Rock dangerous -- or remarkable.  But cruise ships always have to have someone recite Heine's poem about the nymph and then play a recording of the song about her as the ship approaches.  It's traditional.

At 6:00 pm the ship glided into its dock in Rüdesheim.  Despite the hour, two sightseeing excursions were organized, one to visit Siegfried's Cabinet, a museum dedicated to mechanical musical instruments, and the other to sample a Rüdesheimer Coffee, a dangerous beverage involving ample quantities of sugar, whipped cream, and alcohol.  I had to pass on the latter for health reasons, and had already visited the former (which is actually very entertaining), so I just stayed on board a very quiet ship, to finish this post before a very late dinner at 8:30 pm.