Bonn, Germany

We walked through the streets of the former capital of West Germany. Free water samples were given out but it costs .50 euros to go to the water closet (toilet). We saw the house where Beethoven was born. Typical of most of the older European cities - there were many narrow streets, center courtyards, produce stands, McDonalds or Starbucks, and not much car traffic.

Sailing the Rhine

This portion of the Rhine was not the most scenic - we were glad this was the beginning and knowing the best was to come.

Nijmegen, Netherlands

It was a beautiful day for our walking tour of Nijmegen - the Dutch people like their bikes, social housing, and their weed stores (as you will see in the pictures). Bob likes their Australian ice cream.

The Windmills at Kinderdyk

We then sailed to the Kinderdyk where there is a section of working windmills. We were able to go into one of them (steep, steep stairs). People do actually live in them.

The bus ride back

The bus driver took us on a scenic ride back by the North Sea - there were a lot of people enjoying the unusually warm temperatures (in the upper 70's).

August 5th - Delta Works

A Modern Dutch Windmill

The North Sea

We went on a tour to the Delta Works - it is a massive project to stop the Netherlands from being flooded from storms from the North Sea. Bob, of course, liked this engineering marvel.

Our first lock

We went through our first lock that evening - people who sailed before said all the new sailors run to the sundeck to see the first lock; they run a little slower for the second lock; by the 32nd lock, they just comment .... another lock.

Day 3 - We started sailing to Rotterdam

At 5:30 PM, we set sail to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. We expected to see beautiful scenery but it was mostly refineries and a few nuke plants thrown in.

Day 2 and 3 - Antwerp, Belgium

We arrived in Brussels at approximately 9:30 AM. We had a connecting flight from Frankfort. We were exhausted since we hadn't slept in 24 hours. When we arrived on the ship, we had lunch and then got our keys and luggage and went to our room for a nap. We didn't do much the first day just a little stroll around the town.

The next day we toured Antwerp, Belgium. There were about 134 people on the ship and they divided us into 3 groups (we were the blue group). Here are some pictures from the tour

Start of our trip

Since we are home and almost recovered, we are hoping to give a summarized account of our River Cruise. We won't put in all 2500 pictures.

Here we are at the Newark airport - we had to arrive 3 hours early and so we had time to snap a few pictures. Here is our plane and the New York City skyline.