Another beautiful day as we cruise down the Rhine Gorge, past small villages and castles - many in ruins. We have been very fortunate with the weather as far as no rain which could spoil our view. In the afternoon we arrived in Rudesheim where we visited Siegfrieds Mechanical Musical Instrument Museum. This is a privately owned place that has one of the largest collections of automated musical instruments in the world. (Think like a pianola but much more compl...

We arrived at Dusseldorf where we were loaded onto buses to take us to the various chosen activities. We chose Floriade which is an event that happens once every 10 years. It was not quite what we expected - thought it would be more like a floral display of gardens as we may see at Canberra Floriade. This was more like an expo where different countries could put up a display showing innovations on the horticultural scene. There were also other groups dressed...

Spent the morning on a canal boat cruise and city tour which was very enjoyable. The houses along the myriad of canals in Amsterdam are all very similar but they look really beautiful. Some of them are leaning because they are built on reclaimed land but they look really cute. After a brief tour of the city, we stopped in a flower market and had some free time. The main thing you need to watch out for are the cyclists which they call killer bikes as they have ...

We left Paris in the morning to catch the Thalys train - a high speed train- that does the journey from Paris to Amsterdam in about 3 1/2 hours. I think it is about 6 hours by bus. It is a very comfortable way to travel and would definitely recommend it. We board the boat today, but our cabins are not ready until later in the afternoon so we visited the National Maritime Museum and learnt a little about the history of sailing in The Netherlands. We boarded th...

Today was our last day in Paris and was a free one to do as we wished (and we certainly made the most of it). We started at the Louvre and just picked the main sights like the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. You could spend a week in the Louvre and not see it all but after a couple of hours the crowds were getting heavy so we moved on to visit Notre Dame (massive building with huge stain glass circular windows), then on to Saint Chappelle - a smaller chapel wi...