The Amalegro bliss ended today with an early afternoon arrival in Amsterdam. Although the last part of the trip covers a long distance, ships make fast progress on the Rhine (a big river with no locks) and on the Rhine-Amsterdam canal whuch only has two locks. Travelmarvel continued to look after us with an included canal and bus tour of the city. After dinner Cherie, the Cruise Director took us on a walk to the red-light district - not really worth seeing, and a...

This morning Amalegro sailed from Koblenz (where we docked last night), arriving early afternoon in Cologne (Koln in German). The weather was very cool and although we were warned to rug up it was not too bad (still glad we dressed warm though). Our tour guide Marcus (German, but sounded Irish?) gave us a very entertaining commentary on the city and was very un-German in his jokes about the local culture. The tour finished at the Cologne Cathedral. We had seen th...

Today is the coolest so far with a predicted maximum of 13 degrees, but even though it is raining on and off, it has not detracted one little bit. This morning we were cruising and went through the last couple of locks on the Main before entering the Rhine - this was a big change - big river with lots of bigger cargo vessels. After lunch we docked next to another cruise boat and walked through it into Rudesheim where we were taken by a wheeled 'train' to Si...

Kitzingen - Wurzburg 4 May The last couple of days have seen us visit some quaint historical towns along or near the Main River. Yesterday, after breakfast a walk into Kitzingen directly from the boat (no bus required). Although steeped in history and being established 1,300 years ago, we were quite interested in the town's more recent happenings. After WWII the Americans stayed on for some 60 years, so in 2006 when they pulled out (10,000 including their familie...

Life is tough while on holidays - just managed to make breakfast this morning before doing a tour of Bamberg - beautiful Bamberg with a population of 70,000 and that has been UNESCO world heritage listed since 1983. It was cooler this morning with a few drops of rain, but it cleared to a lovely day. Bamberg was untouched by bombing during WWII so it's medieval buildings are the originals (unlike e.g. Nuremberg which was 70% destroyed). Bamberg is famous for it's...