Oh you lucky people! Here in Kenmare it's Wednesday morning and drizzling with rain that is forecast to be "persistent". As a consequence, the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle are not an option and therefore Ches has proposed that she spend a couple of hours shopping in Kenmare (here we go again) and at lunchtime drive to Killarney for the afternoon. The tourist busses should be out of Killarney by mid morning and not return till late afternoon so it could be the bes...

Sunday 21st July - Vienna As you might have gathered, this Blog has gotten away from me. Too much to do and see and too little time to stop and reflect. In part this has been due to the fact that our crew did such a great job in avoiding the lock strikes, which closed every lock in Germany from Tuesday to Friday, that we made it through the final lock into Austria before it began. In doing so, we had longer bus trips to make to visit the various towns in our iti...

It's actually Thursday and we arrived in Carrickfergus late yesterday afternoon after being up at 5.00am for an 8.00am flight out of Prague to Koln/Bonn for a two hour connection to Dublin, the hassles of picking up our rental car and the two hour drive north. We were sound asleep by 9.30pm and it is now 6.00am. Carrickfergus is a little north Belfast and is where my GG Grandfather was born and where my GGG Grandfather settled when he left Scotland in the 1820's....

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 ...