Rudeshiem

Location: Rudesheim, Germany
Weather: 55, sunny
The photo: from Amsterdam, actually. A frequent scene, as bicycles are a popular mode of transport for the locals. Parking places are strictly monitored there, and permits are very expensive.

The internet connectivity on the ship is sometimes marginal. They actually have a "ship computer," a laptop, that passengers can check out, like a library book, for an hour at a time. I brought my own. Anyone wanting to use the internet must purchase a 10 euro ticket which gives one hour of internet time. When that's used up, you buy another. It takes awhile to connect, to log in through the ship's wlan, and each page takes a loooong time to load. What little I've done to date has taken 50 minutes of my hour. I compose my postings offline and quickly cut and paste it once I get connected. Photos take awhile to upload, and re-directing to other web pages are also time consuming.

What we do, as with most cruises, is eat, walk around a little, read a little, eat again, and repeat, sleep and repeat. The food on board is fairly good. Not exceptional, but certainly better than some. The chef uses every morsel of food from each meal. Leftover green beans, you say? Ah, add them to some ground meat, roll them in some kind of flat bread (that isn't a tortilla, but more like lebanese flatbread that's been softened), cover in sauce and cheese, bake and call it Tex-Mex Roll-Ups. Some mixed vegetables? They become garnish for the lunch dish the next day. Two nights in a row I've had fish of varieties I don't know. Last night was limande. Have no idea what it was, except thin white fish.

Today we cruised the Rhine and looked at dozens of castles. Some in ruins, most restored and functioning as hotels. A few are privately owned. One we saw is owned by a company in Berlin and not open to the public. Now I ask you, what does a Berlin company want with a castle on the Rhine? A retreat? A placed to take visitors?

We've watched dozens upon dozens of open and closed barges ply the waters. We speculate about what each barge contains. A few are identifiable as carrying oil. A few have carried gravel and coal. Others? We don't know. Makes for interesting conversation. We also passed the notable spot, the Loreley. And several small islands in the middle of the river. The steep hills are covered in vineyards (all sweet white wines like Riesling), and the trees are still turning color here. Makes for lovely scenery.

My DH's project this morning was to compute the speed of the ship by timing the distance between the kilometer markers. He's good at that kind of thing and deduced that today, anyway, we traveled at about 10 km, or 6 miles, per hour.

Currently, we're docked in Rudeshiem (rude-ess-hime) and will stay here until sometime during the night. DH and I decided not to walk into town today. He has a sore spot on his knee (as a double amputee, that's a painful state to be in and prevents much, if any, walking). My foot is quite swollen, I guess from the lengthy walking I did yesterday. Swollen enough that I can hardly get my foot into the larger of the shoes (two) I brought on this trip. A month ago I had to buy new shoes because of swelling from my broken foot. If I wrap my foot then I can't get the foot into a shoe at all. So, I'm resting the foot, consequently. But we're fine. Enjoying the river-side scenery. Each afternoon they serve "afternoon tea." It's not a formal affair, it's just different teas with some cookies or pastries. We haven't attended that yet, so maybe today is the day.