(no subject)

[tielan]

So, Day 3 of the cruise and I'm surviving.

general thoughts

All right. I'm officially scared.

We're on the boat, and the average age is definitely my parents' age. And the only reason it's my parent's age and not ten years older is because I'm pulling down the average.

My roomie is an early sleeper and a late riser. I'm a late sleeper and an early riser. Thankfully, though, I can now come out into the corners of the ship and write to all hours instead of being stuck in the same hotel room while she's trying to sleep.

The boat itself is lovely and elegant. Not huge, but large enough, and the room is a little cramped but no worse than any room I've ended up sharing with four other con-goers. There's a library and assorted lounge spaces where I could buy cocktails until I'm drunk, and any number of friendly people to chat with - all of them some fifteen to fifty years older than me!

Also, they're playing 'oldies' music: although the last song was 'Never Gonna Dance Again' by George Michael...sung by someone with a heavy Spanish accent, in very electronicised 80s style. And now they're playing Whitney Houston's 'Saving All My Love For You' as elevator music.

*shudders*

Two weeks. I'm not sure I'm going to survive it. Although at least they have a gym and a running track, which I shall be making fairly liberal use of, just as soon as I can.

So nice to have 'my own room' away from the parents, though! My roomie spends most of her time out, and I think I'll be spending a fair clip of shiptime in, unless I want to be reading up in the cocktail bar.


Amsterdam to Koblentz- 14th-17th May

So, I've been to Amsterdam twice now and never seen the red light district other than at about 50m distance while on my way to somewhere else. The cruise was going to take us into the city from the docks (just behind Central Station) but the local soccer (European Football) team won the national competition against last year's winners, so the city was cray with supporters. The cruise director said that he'd been warned several times against taking 140 people into the city to see the red light district on a night like this, and having been in the city last night, I'd say they were perfectly right.

Given that Stef and I had a job of it making our way through the crowds, and we're both of us fit, young, and fast on our feet when we need to be, 140+ sixty-to-eighty-somethings would never have survived it.

Speaking of finding somewhere to have dinner with stef94...

First, we couldn't get a tram - because the part of town we were going into had been blocked off thanks to the sporting event. Then, we found a tram, but it got diverted into another section of town. Then, we walked against the tide of supporters until we got to the restaurant...and realised that it - like so many other businesses - was closed. Understandably so, since thousands of beered-up supporters of a sporting team are not good clientele. We saw bikes pushed over and shop windows broken. There was cheering and chanting and songs from the supporters, and nobody paid any attention to small things like bike lanes and tram tracks.

So, yes, what with one thing and another, we finally found ourselves a small Dutch restaurant called "Latin Quartier", which served nice, solid food. Chatted and ate for the better part of an hour, then walked back to a tram stop and caught it to the station.

Sorry about the really late callback, Stef! I kept forgetting to call! And I'm sorry for mumbling over the phone - my roomie was already in bed when I got back and I was worried about waking her. It was great to see you, though!

Speaking of the roomie, she's packed a bag FULL of stuff - and incredibly heavy stuff at that! And she's a bit of a fusspot - needs a wake-up call and to be organised every moment of the day. I've already mentioned the early-to-bed/late-to-rise thing. After a while it grows a little tiring.

At any rate, today, other than Amsterdam, we got back on the boat at Uttrecht just before lunch and floated down the river towards Koln (Cologne) where we expect to moor tomorrow morning, going on walking tours through the city. I was hoping for more time at the cities and less time travelling, but apparently the dry spring means the river isn't as full as it usually is and so we need to go slower than the usual speed.

I've written quite a lot this afternoon, although I still need to focus on a number of things that are due in the next couple of weeks...


Cologne->Koblentz

It is a little disconcerting that we don't have a lot of time in the cities and towns; there's actually quite a bit of travelling to do. And, due to the dry spring that Europe has been having, the Rhein is very low, which means the speed limits have been reduced, so it takes longer for us to reach our destination than initially believed.

Result? Less time in the towns that we thought we were going to get to see.

Cologne (Köln in the German) is one of those places I would have liked to explore a little more. And Koblentz is supposed to be a very picturesque little town on the Rhein. Unfortunately, we won't get to see it - we were supposed to reach it at 9pm tonight, in time for a walk around town, but we're not going to reach it until after 10pm so...no walkies.

Tomorrow is the Rhein Gorge and Rüdesheim in the afternoon.

Internet connection is very slow and rather painful and very expensive, so I probably won't be answering very much by way of mail, and only uploading stuff when I have something to upload.

And just now I've discovered that my saving this post in a text file has inserted weird paragraph breaks. Joy.