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20071214 Rudesheim-Mainz-Heidelberg-Frankfurt am Main Link to Pictures
Up at 7:00am in Mainz for breakfast. The ship moved from Rudesheim during the early morning and tied up next to "Aurelia" from another line of cruise ships.
The Mainz wiki is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainz
We will go by bus to Heidelberg today for touring and shopping. As we do this, the ship moves to Frankfurt am Main, so we bus back to it there, arriving around 5:00pm.
Changed some travelers checks to Euros in preparation for today.
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By bus to Heidelberg, taking about an hour and a half. Not a very eventful drive - the land is flat till Heidelberg. We went first to the castle of Heidelberg, built in the 1530's and destroyed four times. The ruins are spectacular and one can imagine what it must have looked like when whole. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, perhaps a historian from the University, and had excellent English.
Heidelberg wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg
The castle overlooks the town and the river Neckar. The town is rather smaller than its reputation, but still notable.
We walked with David (our color group Orange program manager, a US native residing in Brussels; each program manager has about 40 people to oversee/accomodate) from the dropoff/pickup point to the main square in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit. We were each given 15 Euro for lunch money. The four of us turned into "Hotel zum Ritter", one of the better restaurants. We had some nice soup, then the entree - pheasant for Glenn & I, Wienerschnitzle for MaryLou and salmon-trout for Dolores. The ladies had dry white wine while we had pilsener.
After lunch, which took most of our free period, we visited a candy place to get the legendary "Studenkiss" candies (of course, we bought more than that). Then a trip through the small Christmas Markt and on to the pickup point. We were ready to get into the bus - the breeze emphasized the cool temperature and the sun would not come out to warm us.
We drove then to Frankfurt am Main (a little over an hour) and right onto the riverfront. The ship had been detained and was not there. So David had the driver, Jan, tour us through the downtown area and past the Christmas Markt, which was really crowded this Friday evening. We resolved not to go back to it.
When we arrived at the riverfront this time, the other two busses had put their people on board, and the ship started moving upstream. So we slowly cruised next to it in the bus. They only moved the ship ahead of another ship docked there. Then they stopped and we boarded.
We went to Glenn & Lou's room and opened a Rhine wine, somewhat sweet but good, and started chatting. When we finished that one, we opened one of ours, a white burgundy, and went through that. Then (somewhat warmed) it was time then to listen to the plan for tomorrow. One piece of news was that we will transfer to the River Discovery two days from now, on the 16th. Tomorrow we arrive in and stay in Miltenberg.
We had dinner with the macarena ladies (Christine & Joan) from last night - they are a hoot. They live in the Hudson valley near Fishkill/Wappingers Falls. They couldn't get over Glenn talking about his kids, their home in San Diego and the adventures with the hogs and their place in Arizona.
Then a special event came along - a trio of classical musicians who go by "La Strada". Hein was from Belgium on a deep-toned guitar, and two ladies, Sima (Israel) and Olga (Belarus) played violin & viola. They did themes from a bunch of classical works (overture from Verdi, waltz by Tchaikovsky) and were really good. The crowd was enthusiastic. We bought one of their CD's, which I'm listening to as I type this. Definitely a high point.
Off then to the stateroom to do computer chores and read, watch the ship get underway, and ....
Frankfurt am Main wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt
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