LET'S START CRUISIN'

Our home for the next week.....courtesy of Uniworld

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After being welcomed aboard we enjoyed a buffet in the lounge area.

Not only was there good food, there was a liquid refreshment or two also.

This young lady took our drink order once and never forgot what we wanted when we walked into the lounge.  

Paul, Barbara, Becci, Matt & Dianne

That kept us busy while they took our suitcases to our room.

Our room.  Lots of space for our stuff.  On the shelves below you can barely see a little statue of Daisy, our dalmatian on the top shelf, and T.H. (more about him below) on the bottom shelf.  Beds were comfortable and I wish I was waking up in one tomorrow morning.

The room was really comfortable and certainly large enough for us to sleep and get dressed.  The rest of the time we were on the deck watching the world go by.

This shot  is looking in from the outside, well it is showing the reflection anyway :)   The little teddy bear is one from Shoney's given to me by a friend when I was doing a lot of traveling to NASCAR races by myself.  She didn't want me to have to be alone in the car so she bought him for me one day.  I named him T.H. for Tom Hanks who is almost as cute.  He has become my travel angel and goes where I do, the rest of the time he sits in my office/love-you room waiting patiently.

Up on the top deck all was quiet.  Soon this would be the center of most of our days when we weren't on shore excursions.

The deck was split between the covered area and the sun tanning area.  

The bridge (is that the right word?) was right in front of these areas - as you can see the captain and first officer were having one last chance to relax and share war stories.

The anchor was pulled and we were on our way to Cologne.

Assorted and suundry photos of what we saw leaving Amsterdam.

The trains run one way on each side of the canal.  

Finally on the Rhine proper and off the canal.

The Ruhr Valley in the 1800's was a coal mining area.  The coal crisis of the 1960's saw many of these mines shut down and jobs were halved.  A considerable effort was made to bring this area back to the affluence it had known and it was successful.  Now "Ruhrpott" is a thriving metropolis of both urban living and industry.

Perhaps more interesting is a discovery made in 1856 in a little known mining area.  The remains of a dead man were found and through scientific testing was deemed a contemporary of the Cro Magnon man and was named Neanderthal.  We didn't find any dead bodies or see Neanderthal.

Leading up to the locks that took us into the valley we passed these....

So next we will go through the locks, through the valley and on to Cologne....lots of neat stuff in Cologne besides the cathedral.

MARKSBURG CASTLE

High on top of a hill lies Marksburg Castle.  Continually lived in for over 700 years, it is the only "hill" castle that has never been destroyed.  Today it is the headquarters for the German Castles Association, who preserve and protect castles and stately homes.  We took the tour while in Koblenz and oh so glad we did.  The little girl in me came out as we walked into a real live castle...kept waiting for my knight in shining armor to appear, and then realized I had been married to him for 40 years.

The doorway on the left led to a great huge area with very rough stone floors and very wide stairs, "Riders Stairway" as you can see on the right.  Reason?  Horses came in through that door and on those steps.  Gosh I gripe about dog hair and puppy training mistakes?

Outside steps leading up to the top of the castle walls....looking for enemies sneaking up?

Think they would be able to see if 

anyone was coming from the

left or the right.  

And if they were being threatened, this baby would probably deter any serious attempts.  It is one of several that are aimed at the Rhine.  The cannons were differentiated by the weight as 6 pounders or 12 pounders and could protect the entire Rhine frontage with a range of about 1000 meters (conversion is 1.09 yards to 1 meter - if my lousy math is right, that is 10 football fields).  They did not say how accurate the cannons were at that range though.  The oldest portion of the Great Battery was built in 1589, the latest portion was built in 1711. 

If for some reason the bad guys did get by and got close enough to try to come through a gate, there was a machicolation above the third gate, Notches Gate.  The small balcony was used to throw stones onto advancing troops, ticking them off royally since they were small boulders. 

Around the Rhinezwinger (Upper Bailey) is two herb gardens.  Although the majority of the 150 different plants are either for seasoning or for medicinal purposes, some were used by witches, and a couple were highly toxic.

Don't ask, cause I don't know, but they
were sure pretty.












OK, lets go inside...lots to see in here. Including the armor....

Being the knights in shining armor that they were, they made sure their ladies were protected too...

Can you believe this??????  Talk about a yeast infection....

Since the ladies couldn't do much else, they tended house, or would that be tended castle???

She could spend her mornings spinning wool;
then spend her afternoons weaving it.





The knights and other male members of the family would be hungry after fighting dragons and other assorted bad guys and would come in for a meal.

 Perhaps she would fix them some duck, since we all have ducks hanging around the kitchen ready to be plucked.

A quick trip to the pantry for the necessary oils and herbs to bring out the subtle taste of ripened waterfowl.

Taking the necessary food items she would head to the kitchen island to prepare the meal.

And cook it in her state-of-the art stove.

And finally on to the china hutch for the everyday dishes to serve

Bon Apetit!

Entertainment provided by  Fair Maiden Damsels


Finally the day is over and it is time to get some sleep.  Into the cold bed chamber goeth thou, to be tucked in behind velvet curtains that are there to keep the night's chill out.

However the nights are cold in those castles, don'tcha know, so we all need a servant to sit on a hard stool all night long outside the backdoor of the fireplace to keep the fires burning....

So I'm off to enjoy the present day....see you at some point.