Riverboat cruises are NOT better than MY Bed & Breakfast

Travelling with family to Ottawa and beyond should elicit wonderful memories but I a must be an ungrateful person. I just don't process things as well as other people but when it comes to travel, when I get home I have to process the trip before I can give you an honest answer to "how was it"?  It's been a year now so we should be safe. While most people come home and say oh my God that was a blast, I think of the negative stuff, unfortunately. I travel the world lots to lots of places and now most of those places I can say wow that was amazing but when I got home from that trip, nope.

My latest trip on a Riverboat Cruise from Amsterdam to Basel Switzerland taught me something about myself I didn't know; At 57, I was TOO YOUNG for a Riverboat Cruise. There is no gym, proper walking path covered by the elements, hot tubs, stores, Casino or pool. We could eat, sleep and drink. As you can see, they did lots of sleeping so maybe they are just the right age for the RB cruise but not me.

 I guess I've been spoiled by the big cruise lines which I love.  Done an Eastern Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Alaskan but it will be awhile before I do a small ship again.



On the plus side, I do find that I learn a lot on these trips. I get to stay at bed and breakfast and Airbnb's and I get to steal all their ideas and bring them back to my own bed and breakfast and call it my own. That's good, isn't it?

I especially can't wait to paint a wall in my bathroom with all of the things to see and do in Orleans and downtown. Isn't it sad that the only room in my house that is bare is a bathroom? This guy paid a lot of money but I'm cheap so will do it myself.  I will add that to my ONE DAY list!!!!  I also learned the importance of never letting your guard down as a host  by over indulging or combining pain killers with alcohol. This host had to be poured into his home and it was not a pretty sight, then he proceeded to hit on my bro- not cool buddy; hysterically funny though for future heckling opportunities against my brother......... for life!

When I went to Amsterdam two days before the cruise with my siblings, unlike the locals, we walked everywhere, hour after infernal hour because drill Sargent Diane refuses to cab or bus but the openness of Amsterdam was quite enlightening. The red light district was fascinating yet a little disappointing when you saw the bored expressions on the display of ladies for viewing. I don't know what I was expecting; them cartwheeling with excitement?
We went to a fancy dog park and I'm not sure what my brother is doing but they enjoyed playing there.

 It was interesting to see how open Amsterdam is for marijuana use which when I wrote this was fascinating but now is quite redundant.
I should warn you that this year has been off the charts busy so I couldn't blog.  I'm getting ready to go to Australia again so this cruise blog has to be off my plate before the next one.

The most shocking revelation in Amsterdam was how many people take bikes. bikers have the right of way so if you're walking in their biking path, God help you. They will hit you, not apologize and drive off because you are too stoopid for getting in their way.

The most amazing thing though was how friendly everybody was there. Everyone would stop to help you and look at your map and give you the wrong directions unintentionally. We got lost chronically around our Airbnb. I have no idea how the 4 of us could be so directionally challenged until I realized it was the whole city. Finally after circling around trying to find our "home:", about the 4th time I went in a store and the store keeper left his store and walked us home for 15 minutes. I can't imagine anybody in Canada doing that and we're supposed to be the friendly country.

It was interesting to do Christmas markets and Windmills within days of each other.  We specifically booked our cruise to see the Christmas markets. Naive me, I pictured all along the Rhine all the trees aglitter with Christmas lights and maybe different Santas along the way giving us stockings full of swag...

I guess it's no worse than the agent booking our elephant sanctuary with the baby elephants in Thailand and telling us they were so cute to hold.  Both my gullible daughter and myself pictured ourselves carrying the infant elephants in our arms.  Imagine our horror when we saw the baby elephants and realized they weighed a ton, literally but I digress.  We are gullible, let's just leave it at that.



So, when we reached our port, the free, included tour would take us to a Christmas Market and the first one was magical. The second one was an exact replica of vendors and items just a different city. It was just one flea market after another and all identical except for one place that put a skating rink downtown and lit up the ice. So beautiful. Every city should do this.

The narrow lock for two ships

I learned more about boat launch and ships that I probably wanted to. The ship's Captain is in a raised box near the front of the boat and every time they would go under a bridge, the staff would vacate the Box and the box would sink down into the boat. That's a sight to see as is when the boat passing alongside another freighter in a lock and it really doesn't look like they're going to make it but thankfully they always do even if it is with only an inch between the concrete walls and the competing for space boats.

There are lots of castles lots of markets and a bazilian churches. Oh my, I thought my siblings would string me up if we visited even one more sacred landmark and lit one more candle.   In Cologne we stopped off at St Peters and it was magnificent. The day was dreary the weather was cold the church looked dark and haunted but when we circled the city and came back, it was empty of congregants, suddenly the sunset lit up the church like it was made of solid gold. It was glorious and totally unexpected. What a magnificent structure that 20 year olds built years ago. The sunburst lasted about 2 minutes until I could take my photo but that two minutes was priceless!

There were so many castles to see in Germany but only two actual port visits.  In Koblenz we went to the Marksburg Castle which is hard to believe people live there, it's so wild. They had a torture chamber and off the kitchen, a turret with a hole in the ground for people to poop while they were talking to people who were eating. I guess I wouldn't want to be the one walking under the turret when the urge hit someone from above.

This beautiful castle was one we saw.  Everyone was trying to get the best pic but no one had an ariel view like I did.  Best pic of the day and I lorded it over all the other travelers and agreed to take them to the most magical spot.  I took them to the tourist marketing photo that I had snapped from the frame.  Oh, my name was dirt but laughter is so good for the soul.

Heidelberg castle was bittersweet for me.  I'd been there 30 years ago with 100 US male army soldiers so this time wasn't as magical and they closed off the interior tour as well.  Hard to compete with my first visit when I was young and foolish.

What I wasn't prepared for with this Christmas Market tour because late into the month of November was cold. There wasn't really any snow but we were chilled to the bone quite often. One day I counted 11 layers of clothing on me and when that day ended I recycled the clothes to a different layer on the outside and a different color. I felt a bit like a homeless person.

The Black Forest Area was surprising to me. We took a long included bus tour out to the black forest which was very deep in snow. There were workshops on black forest cake making, cuckoo clock and glass blowing. We almost got lucky and got to take home a $13,000 cuckoo clock when my brother stumbled but he recovered altho I'm sure his heart was ready to go into cardiac arrest.

Met a lovely lady from California who had never seen snow so I suggested she do snow angels and also stand under a heavily laden eaves trough with a ton of melting snow while I took lots of pictures of her but alas it never did fall on her- I was poised ready just in case. Don't judge me.  Everybody wants the perfect action shot.

Upon our return we had to walk to the three corners of France Germany and Switzerland and have numerous pictures taken. Someone said it was not an easy place to get to; they would be right.  It's an even more difficult place to find. I think the gods finally shook their heads and just moved the 3 corners to where we were wandering 'cause we never would have found it on our own. Quite possibly this wasn't even the right monument but just give it to us.

We're such fancy travelers, we had breakfast on the ship in Germany lunch in France at a boulangerie/deli then walked back into Switzerland to catch a tram to go into Germany shopping and take our picture at the 3 borders.  Poor Tom with his bad feet and I made us go from country to country to country .  

Back to the boat- because there were four of us and we would arrive often late for dinner we would have to join other tables but not on the night of the Captain's Dinner because they ran out of seats. We had to sit in the lounge by ourselves like lepers. We met some lovely people from Arizona and North Carolina, all over the place. They were all interested in hearing about my bed and breakfast but as of this date, I have yet to see one of these people.  
Hindsight helped us realize too that if we didn't cheap out on the rooms, maybe we wouldn't have noticed the smell of sewage either down in the lower level where we were located and outside on the walking deck. If you wait a year though before you reminisce, "it was the best trip ever.

Switzerland is amazing. We had an Airbnb on the Swiss German border near France.  Switzerland is pretty cool because they have mobility passes which makes tram travel free to travel anywhere in Switzerland as long as we are staying here as a tourist for a couple of nights. Ottawa should consider that but I guess they would lose money.  And I'm sure like in Heidelberg, where university is free, we are not going that route either. There is a place that offers new kinds of schools where one day they speak French, one day German, one day English... Isn't that a fantastic idea.  We think we are so progressive.  Doesn't matter, I love to travel but I love Canada more.

On our return trip, my sister bought a bottle of booze and convinced me to buy one at the grocery store.  She wrapped hers well in clothes and put it in the suitcase.  Briefly, I thought, isn't she foolish.  It will get broken.  I will just shlep mine around in the backpack.  At the security, the lady ahead was questioned about liquids and I smugly smiled that mine were all safely in a tiny plastic bag and then it hit me.  OMG nooooooo!

  My turn, and they "regretfully" took it away, I'm sure for their upcoming Chistmas party. I was sooooo sad.  The trip was a bust.  There was no consoling me and then when we reached the waiting area, it flashed, Flight to Amsterdam for us Canadians is cancelled, not just delayed.  WTF?  We trudged back to start all over again and I stopped briefly at security to say our flight was cancelled, and jokingly requested to have my bottle back and OMG they gave it to me.  Woohoo!  Whoopie!  Was a great trip we were
having. The irony to this story is I used to be a travel agent so I know better and more importantly, I  forget and DO THIS EVERY SINGLE YEAR!  Don't worry, I will tell you about it again when I come back from Australia. Cheers Mate.

Can't rotate the picture to save my soul.