Rhine River Cruise #3 Rhine Gorge to Amsterdam

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Day five started with a 'sail' from Rudesheim to Koblenz - this took us through the beautiful Rhine Gorge, lined with old castles, cathedrals, small villages & towns and vineyards. Cool & breezy at first but cleared to a lovely sunny day - the panorama was taken on the top deck as we were leaving the gorge area. The photo captions cover the rest of the highlights to the end of the cruise in Amsterdam.
* Reminder - view all photos in small format first if you're considering adding a comment at the end. If you want to see photos in large format, go back to start and click on first one to start slide show.
Cheers from Jan & Garry

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Photos

High 'n Dry
Near Kaub, in the Rhine Gorge, this island 'castle' is meant to have a 'bow' cutting through the Rhine current - low water levels left it high and dry!

Lorelei's Sister
The Rock of the Lorelei was a big cliff with dangerous currents nearby - but we did find her sister around the corner - need to click and zoom to see her.

Marksburg Castle
Probably the biggest of the fortresses we saw & "the only truely medieval one in the middle Rhine".

Brilliant Scenery
Scenes like this had cameras clicking & tingling all around us - each turn of the river was a nice surprise - especially now that the weather had cleared.

Lunch Dessert Table
Had lunch just before arriving at Koblenz - had to take a snap of today's dessert table - aren't those pastry swans amazing!?

Koblenz - 2 Rivers
Enjoyed a lovely 'self-guided' walk around Koblenz. This touristy area had a huge monument to Wilhelm I. The park was shaped like the bow of a ship with the Moselle River on the left meeting the Rhine.

Cologne Tour
A morning tour of the old Cologne City Centre - good guide with a sense of humour and definite opinions about wedding attire (that's a story for later).

Post WWII Rebuild
As most of Colgne was flattened by WWII bombing, much of the 'old architecture' is a post war attempt to retain old world charm - worked well.

Town Hall Wedding
Our guide took us past the Town Hall where we saw people involved in civil wedding ceremonies - this is the legal part. Church wedding ceremonies are not regarded as legal by the state!

Cologne Cathedral
Wow - the wide angle lense helped (and sloped the walls) - this was bigger than Notre Dame - the spires on the left were over 150m high. 600 years from beginning to completion - WWII bombs left it unscathed.

Incredible Windows
Hard to do justice to the interior of massive cathedrals but I was happy with this shot of one of its stained glass windows. Every window told a story.

Facebooking between tours
The ship's satellite wifi could manage a little Facebook messaging but uploading photos to TravelBlog was not possible. Here Jan is checking her wall before arriving in Amsterdam for our final day.

Amsterdam Bike Parking
Morning tour of Amsterdam - they're huge bike users so the city council put in this multi storey bike parking facility near their central station.

Canal Tour
Informative canal boat tour of Amsterdam - glass roof so good views in all directions - passed through mini locks - went by Anne Frank's house - learnt about canal system.

Canal Homes
First canal homes were old boats, solving a problem re housing shortages, but expensive upkeep in long term. This style emerged, small flat on a floating concrete platform - lasts ages!

Another Awesome Lunch
Between tours - another fantastic lunch - this is just a selection of what was available - massive roast turkey in the carvery - but those prawns with fish (ragout) - yummmmm!

Zaanse Schans Windmills
What a learning curve here! The mill we toured crushed limestone & granite - the one next door was set up to operate a set of vertical band saws for timber cutting. A good stiff breeze made our tour perfect for demonstrations.

Wall to Wall Clogs
Saw a clog making (cloning) demonstration - used lathe-like machines to copy from an original. But it was interesting to learn that many farmers still use them - they resist water when working in damp conditions.

Amsterdam Red Light District
No cameras allowed outside the windows of the ladies that use red lights - the place was packed, mostly with tourists - some of the 'girls' were bored and chatted on their phones - quite a finale - off to New York tomorrow.

Comments

[Ian]

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Great pics! We have enjoyed experiencing the Rhine cruise vicariously - its on our to do list now... it will be difficult to answer the inevitable question "what was the highlight?"..