Rhine River Cruise Last Report

June 14, 2019 Friday

We have been the boat is mostly staffed by Eastern Europeans.  I did talk to one waiter and he told me that he was from Bulgaria and had spent two years as a border guard there. 

Over the evening we were transported on our ship to Mainz.  Linda and I participated in our last Avalon included tour in the morning.  A bus drove us to Eltville Magnificent Rosses Walking Tour.  Our guide Linda guided us through a magnificent rose garden in the Castle of Sovereigns Elect n Eltville.  The garden was established in 1979 and it nowadays counts more than 350 different kinds of roses.   Altville is considered a rose city.  There are 12 rose cities in Germany.  

On the way to the tour, Linda told us that there are 16 states in Germany. The Rhine River is 760 miles long and is the second longest River in Europe.  The Danube is longer.  100,000 ships travel this river each year.  There are 82 million people in Germany.  There was to be 3 marriages conducted at the Rose Garden the day we were there.  We saw many people in wedding participation dress.  In Germany, a couple is required by law to have a civil ceremony.  On this trip, we have seen many grape wine plants. I had not realized what a big industry wine production is in Germany before traveling here. I took many pictures of the rose garden.  

On this trip we have visited 11 ports in the 8 days that we spent on the ship.  

June 15, Saturday

Today we left the boat and were bused to a nice Westin Hotel in Frankfurt. We stayed two nights in this nice hotel. We walked the streets on Saturday down town and it was very busy.  On Sunday, we walked and visited 4 different museums of 34 that were available for us to see.  We walked over 10,000 steps our next to last day in German.  The museums were very nice. 

June 18, 2019

We spent all day yesterday returning to our home in California.  We flew on Delta, which are partners with Air France.  Air France is my least favorite airline because of the extreme lack of room in their seats.  It seems that Delta had followed their lead and Linda and I were uncomfortable with the limited space in our seats.  We survived. They really wanted us to spend the extreme prices for more expensive seats.  CNN’s 2019 Travel best airlines and cleanest airlines did not include Delta or Airfrance.  Lyft was outstanding calling from Antioch Bart and had a James present within 5 minutes with a new Audi car to transport us to Trilogy. 

Over all conclusions of this trip:  My wife has been urging (nice term for nagging) to take this trip for years. It was a nice trip.  90% of the cities in Germany that we visited had been destroyed in WWII.  If I had to do a European River Cruise trip again, I would prefer to take the River Cruise on the Danube River because the cities on that river are more in tack and there would be more historical areas to see.  I think that overall Avalon Waterways provides a good tour of the Rhine River area.  I still have a bad taste in my mouth about the way we were treated when we experienced a bad gas smell in our room that lasted for hours.   I ate too much on this trip. 

I spent considerable time learning some German for this trip using the PIMSLEUR system and have no regrets even though I did not use much of it.