What you get when you travel from east to west is a day that's around 36 hours long. That can provide justification for all sorts of odd behavior. The flight from Sydney to Doha was the longest leg of any journey we have ever made …. 15 hours. As we departed the aircraft in Doha, I suggested to Ches that I expected to get an excellent cup of coffee, being that the middle east is the origin of coffee. Barely into the terminal and I came across Starbucks,...

Saturday 14th Nurenberg I forgot to point out that all the images in the blog can be enlarged by clicking on them and also can be played as a slide show. Videos have been impossible to load to date but I might try again one day. Bill & Lee gave some thought to my question about 2% wine: Bills immediate reaction (like yours) was scepticism. Similar stories abound with drinking of ale which is of that percentage. I know many of the great Hunter Semillons hav...

Wednesday 10th July Ches had already seen Heidelberg on a previous trip when we attended the Frankfurt Book Fair. She decided to have a quiet day on board while I went to Heidelberg. This town has a population of 139,000 people of which 28,000 are university students (Law and Medicine are the biggest schools) and 20,000 are Americans (military personnel and their families) We started out at the Castle. This was or is as much a palace as a castle. We began by ...

Friday 12th July I'm desperately trying to catch up on this blogging. The problem is that every day is so full that there's barely a spare minute to read let alone blog. On reflection, the real problem is dinner. On most trips I have blogged of an evening or first thing in the morning. It's actually 6.30 am as I am writing this now. On this trip, we enter the dining room at 7.00 pm, and after four courses and conversation with fellow travellers, it's close to 10....

Thursday 11th July When I returned to the boat on Wednesday afternoon, it was to the news that the lock workers strikes were spreading and that we would now leave immediately instead of at 11.30 and sail all night in order to get to Miltenberg by 8.00 am. The idea being that we would be bussed into Miltenberg, while the boat moved ahead to avoid the scheduled strike at a lock on the approach to Wurzburg. We had heard of another ship being held for 7 hours and ...