Germany Rhine River Cruise June 7-17, 2019 Trip Report

This is a trip report for our River cruise on the Rhine river starting on 7 June 2019.  We are cruising on the Rhine River starting in Amsterdam ending in Frankfurt, Germany.  The cruise is with the Avalon Waterways and we are on the ship named Panorama.  We will be passing by the cities of: Amsterdam, Xanten, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Koblenz, Eltville and Mainz. 

We started our trip on 7 June 2019 by the transportation service Lyft picking us up at our home in Trilogy and taking us to the Antioch Bart station.  We used a local driver phone list provided by a Nextdoor entry a while back to find a driver that was available early in the morning.  We called Tom on the list and he turned on his Lyft driver availability switch and was at our house within 15 minutes. Tom gave us a detailed explanation of Lyft.  This is my first encounter with this service and I am sold.  They have trip insurance coverage for their drivers which is a big plus. The rates are reasonable.  Tom had soft music in the car to listen to, offered us candy, and to clean our glasses.  BART worked very well and it took us a little over 2 hours on a weekday to get to SFO.  It was almost too efficient because we had a longer wait then anticipated for a Delta flight to Seattle and then directly to Amsterdam.   Our flight is on a very large Boeing 767-300 with a capacity of 261 passengers with almost all seats filled.  Our trip guides met us immediately at the airport and took us on a 20 minute trip to the river ship Panorama to begin our cruise on the Rhine river.  We received a nice briefing on the Netherlands and the city of Amsterdam on the way to the ship.  The country has 16 million people and is mostly reclaimed land from the sea.  People who ride bicycles here have the right away on bike paths and can legally run over pedestrians.  Bike paths are everywhere and car parking places are being removed in favor of bike parking.  People mostly have two bikes.  One for home to commute to a public transport and then a town bike for commuting to their place of employment.

On the ship, our room is very nice with a larger then normal ship bathroom.  Coffee and very good cookies were awaiting us. Free wifi on board.  We had the normal safety meeting, free glass of champagne and information on the tours.  Linda and I signed up for three days of tours.  More decisions to make in the future.

On Sunday, Linda and I participated in tours.  She took a Amsterdam canal cruise and visit to a diamond factory in the morning.  I did the leisurely culinary walk in Amsterdam.  We saw some interesting places and sampled food, drink at many of them.   I am a vegetarian and did not eat the sardines, meat.  I did drink two beers and a shot of vodka along with other treats that included very good three pieces of cheese. In the afternoon we visited together Muiderslot Castle.  I over did it yesterday walking a total of 14,517 steps.  Too much.  My guide on the morning walking tour is named Robert and he was a fun guy who provided us with lots of information. The area is very expensive to live where a 3 bedroom apartment will go for 800,000 Euros.  The house in the city were each build on 40 pilons which have decayed over the year causing the houses to lean.  They are supported by the houses next to them which keeps them from falling over.  The owners are not allowed to change the frontal appearance of the homes because it is a declared historical area.  Taxes are paid on how big the front of the house is so the houses have narrow fronts and large rear ends.  Amsterdam in history was a refugee center for religious refugees and collected many different religions.  That did not work out well for Ann Frank during the German occupation.  The Dutch surrendered during WWII after one of their cities.   was demolished by German bombs.  It saved the old houses in Amsterdam. 

Parking cars is at a premium and people are charged 7.50 Euros per hour.  There is a 60 Euro fine for parking violators.  We observed massive amounts of bikes and people riding on bikes.  The Amsterdam flag is composed of three X marks indicating no fire, flooding and plague.  Holland known for its windmills to keep the sea water out is now known for thousands of electric water pumps to do the same service.  Large numbers of tourists visit the city.  By high speed train England is 4 hours away and Paris is 3 hours away from Amsterdam.

The Castle was built in the 13^th century to control the near by river.  At the time of construction it had no windows and did have narrow slots to shoot arrows from.  People slept partially sitting up in bed as a method to control high blood pressure.  The diet at the time was mostly composed of fish which could be acquired fresh daily.  Beer was drank over water because the water was unsanitary.  Children as young as 2 years old were fed beer.

The food on our river cruise boat is good.  The service is excellent.  Our rooms are well maintained.