CRUISING THE RHINE TO KOBLENZ, GERMANY

Beautiful place eh?








Day 200 (Wow! DAY TWO HUNDRED!!!!)

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Heard on CNN tonight that there was a fatal plane crash in Phuket, Thailand..Are there any Australians involved?
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Koblenz, Germany

What a day it's been!

We're in Koblenz!

And how we got here was....

After going for our walk around Frankfurter we went to the main train station and organised our train ticket to Mainz and ferrz ticket to Cologne...

So we caught the midmorning train from Frankfuter to Mainz...

Then once we got there, we caught a taxi for 8 euro's to the ferry (it's so easy getting a taxi after all our usual walking or navigating ourselves on busses and trains!!!) and then waited for the scheduled 11.30am ferry...

Which was late!

And our tickets stuffed them around because we bought them at the train station and not the ferry terminal so they got confused.....

Which is when we started wondering where all the lateral thinking and organisation was.....etcetc (we got pissed off basically as we were getting tired of travelling and conducters looking at tickets like the eurail and getting confused!)

The guy told us to leave.

We held our ground and stayed ON.

Management was called...blah blah blah...words were spoken...we said loudly how we'd paid 48.50 euro EACH for our tickets and we were going to go from Mainz to Cologne with them! LIKE IT OR NOT. Greg was NOT budging! We paid and we're going. Gee we're getting assertive.

So..on we got..with everyone looking.....us screaming all the way....people cheering, clapping at the show....(hehe not really, that just sounded good! But it was close!)


The Route we took!













We settled down on top of the ferry to gaze at some of the best scenery on the Rhine River...SO SO Gorgeous.....all was almost forgotten...

Until Greg got summonsed to the management again......not me, just GREG! To talk about bloody tickets...I would have gone along but i stayed with our luggage.

It got more and more relaxed as we cruised further along the Rhine, looking at the fortresses, castles, vineyards...

Greg finally came back. All sorted after he negotiated his way around the small problem. Which they were still dubious about. It must have been the first time someone had made a booking for the ferry at the train station! And it sounded like Greg handled it beautifully, explaining it all, reading the small print....convincing them they were ignorant of their own system.

But after that.....

We sampled the ferry food (delicious) and drank the region's beautiful red wine. (also delicious!) and admired the view, which i might add, is on UNESCO's world heritage site.

We changed ferries in Rudesheim to another bigger boat (which they called a ship) and merrily cruised further along the upper Rhine...soo beautiful....

This trip is so worth going on. So put it in your 'To Do's'!

All the hassles of getting on the boat..and then again when we changed ferries in Rudesheim was forgotten....

Until, we were told we couldn't go all the way to Cologne...we had to get off at Koblenz..

Which is where we are now!!

We got new tickets in the end so there will be no confusion!

So...we finish our ferry leg on the Rhine River tomorrow....when we go to Cologne, then we'll be training it to Amsterdam! And we have to start paying...no eurail, gosh, i hope we don't forget!!!

Life is so exciting life isn't it?

The hotel where we are now, is really nice.

We got it through the Tourist Office here in Koblenz.

That's one thing, Germany has the BEST tourist offices. They're so helpful and don't charge commission on booking a hotel.

This hotel also has free internet..so, as you can see by my blog updates...i'm making good use of!

But now....have to write a nasty letter to London because the buggars have renegged on a booking we made there due to 'London going crazy over the past week with all the bookings to their website!'

To me, that doesn't give them a good reason to go ahead and ask us to pay an extra 15 POUNDS per night! (And from my previous complaints before you will know the pound is outrageous...and for every pound we pay $2.50!)

Grrrrrr........

My LEO Savage is going to come out when i reply and tell them just how unethical i think they are being..........................

I'm off to bed now....we have the morning to explore then we're off again...

Nighties, see you in The Netherlands....:-)

FRANKFURT, GERMANY

Day 199

Frankfurt (locals call it Frankfuter and Hamburger!)

We caught the 4.26pm train from Hamburg to Frankfurt and arrived with no accomodation, once again, and found it more difficult to secure anything! There was as Alto Car Show going on...so hotels were booked out! How many times has that happened?

We ended up finding a gorgeous hotel called the Atlantic at about 9pm which was above our budget but it was nice!!!

A nice hotel every now and again is like a holiday! We jumped on the bed and laughed like kids.....it's the little things that make us happy these days...a comfy bed, a toilet and shower in the room...geepers...I feel like an alley cat sometimes!

We did what we do...and took off after we dumped our stuff..and orientated ourselves! I tell you, it doesn't take long for us to do that these days..we know where to head for..and what to do.....go to the local beir garten in Germany! haha.....Only this time we had orange juice....long day tomorrow....

And we wanted to get up early and go for a walk in the city before heading off again...

Go, go, go at the moment...

By the way Frankfuter is just so...GERMANY!!!

And we love Germany!

HAMBURG, GERMANY

Day 198

Hamburg, Germany

Crikey!

That was huge. Our trip from Norway via Sweden and Denmark to Germany was exhausting! It took over 24 hours on the train..and our last leg to Hamburg was HORRIBLE! Well, it started our that way because we decided we didn't need to reserve our seats on the train and when we went to get on, no seats!!! Ohhhhhh

We finally found our way to the first class carriage and settled in for the last leg, and our last eurail journey...Fancy that....since March, we've spent four of those months 'eurailing' in Southern and now Northern Europe!

No wonder i'm SICK OF TRAINS!

Regarding the eurail passes...it's definitely worth paying the little bit extra to get first class tickets!

So Saturday night was spent in Hamburg!

We didn't have accomodation so we looked for the red light district and our hotel..which i'm not actually joking about..we've found the most budget places are near the sex outlets..and so far, haven't had a problem staying there at all!

After putting our bags down we headed for the Hamburg Pub next door!! It was so funny too..It was obviously a local pub where newcomers were looked at sceptically..because when we went in, the 3 guys at the bar went deathly quiet.....

Until we ordered our Jever bier (yummy) and practised our terrible German!

The next day we explored Hamburg and went to a chinese exhibition which was interesting..and had another beer at the Hamburg yacht club (and watched the race) and just relaxed..

We also took a sightseeing tour just to find out a bit more about Hamburg..and saw all the canals..apparently there used to be a lot more than there are now but they blocked them all in. There are lots of bridges too..and Amsterdam is the only place in Europe that has more than Hamburg!

Hamburg is considered the Venice of the North...i wonder how many more Venice of the North, South, East, West...a world can take!!!! ha!

Another point that fascinated me was there are over a hundred consulates here in Hamburg! Only Hong Kong and New York have more!

We're back to Euro's and back to getting the paper a bit cheaper! Madeline is still making news..now the Portugese police are blaming the parents and we read that they think they dumped her in the sea! Gosh.....what a drama that has been. It happened just a few days after we were in the Algarve (May 3rd) and it's still making news! I hope they find out what happened...but i keep thinking she's only one in so many that go missing around the world every year...

Dinner was at the Hamburger fest in the main square...

We had HOTDOGS!

Off to Frankfurt next...(probably have hamburgers there! haha!)