My Passport’s Travels

Now that we are on the ship, I will drop in the 4-page Daily.

It’s finally, officially cruise day! We had a leisurely morning of breakfast and packing, all gearing up to The Ordeal. (Another side note on the hotel – they have a coffee and tea bar in the lobby – however, it turned out to be an urn of hot water, tea bags and instant coffee, with no way to measure how much instant coffee you were getting out of the container.) Bonus pics of the room!

Ack to The Ordeal. Somehow we have to get all our luggage on the tiny elevator and back down to street level to meet our driver at 11. This was further complicated by the rain, so we didn’t want to use the back entrance with only 8 steps as it required walking outside and around the buildings. Step one accomplished – luggage in the lobby!

Mom was walking the first bag down the stairs and a gentleman walks up and asks for me – he’s our driver! Not only that – but he knew the hotel well enough to park out back, so he grabbed the suitcases and trotted off with us following behind gratefully. He packed us up in the car and off we went! It was another lovely drive through the country side and a short hour later, we’re pulling up at the dock!

Paolo, one of the dining room servers, met us at the car, took us in hand and got us unloaded so efficiently the driver’s head was spinning! The Einar is bigger than I expected, but still tiny compared to an ocean cruise ship. She’s decorated for Christmas!

Interestingly, we didn’t go through security screening to get on the ship. We just walked up to the front desk on the main deck and she checked our passports. However, she missed the fact that the year was incorrect on my birthday, which would come into play later when I tried to connect to the WiFi. (But it was an easy fix once the issue was understood.)

Our room was not going to be ready for a little while, so we were given a note with our stateroom number on it, and sent off to enjoy the ship. We were told to leave the note where it could be easily seen and they’d come tell us when our room was ready. So we headed off to lunch! The restaurant is also on the main deck and was offering a lovely buffet – salad, ribs, corn on the cob, an open faced club sandwich, pasta and roasted potatoes. Dessert was apple tart or Nutella panne cotta. We sat with another mother/daughter pair and visited about places we’ve travelled. While dining, we watched swimmers in the Rhein! I can’t imagine how cold it was – it was only supposed to get to 40 today.

After lunch, we went up to the lounge on deck 3 for a coffee while we waited for our stateroom to be ready. They have wonderful coffee machines that are available all the time! They make coffee, cappuccinos, espresso shots, lattes and macchiatos – all at the press of the button. There are caramel and hazelnut syrups, several kinds of sweeteners and about 8 types of tea bags available. Before dinner, there are also cookies and pastries, too.

Claire, one of the restaurant servers, found us to walk us to our room. We stopped by the front desk on the main floor to pick up our keys and she walked us down to show us the room. It’s small – but we fit well. Even being prepared for it, the window was a bit of a surprise when we first saw it. But it lets in plenty of light. We also met Laura, our amazing stateroom hostess for the week.

We took too long unpacking to join the organized walk through Basel, but decided to head out on our own. We strolled down the Rhein, and enjoyed the views.

The walkway along the River ended so we wandered downtown for a couple of blocks.

We found the Mittlere Brücke (Middle Bridge)!

We crossed it and learned from the signage that it’s turning 800 years old in 2027!

Walking back to the ship on the other side of the river we may have gotten a little lost. The bridge we intended to cross doesn’t have access from the promenade, but we finally found a back street that got us there.

We happened on this city gate when we were almost back to the ship. The gates inside stood probably 20 feet tall and had huge 8 foot square timbers that could be used to barricade them closed if needed.

I was so surprised at how fast the current was!

Back on board (which, by the way, we again didn’t have to go through any kind of security scan to board), we dropped our coats and bags in the room, ran a comb through our hair and hurried up to the lounge to find a seat before the walking tour returned. We ended up visiting with a lovely couple from Perth who are also on their first Viking River Cruise.

Program Directors Emilie, from Brussels, conducted a “welcome to your cruise” program. It started with the safety briefing from Captain Lucian. He mentioned in passing that the river is shallow enough that the third deck and sun deck would be above water if there were any issues. We learned the onboard rules and regulations from the Hotel Director, Frank. Frank said our behavior would determine whether he had to be Sgt Schultz or Colonel Klink! Emilie rounded the event out by telling what to expect tomorrow in Breisach. She told us we need to remember that we are ship 51 – because there will be a couple of Viking ships in port and our guides will all have our ship number on their “lollypops” (the red paddles). Finally, we were set free for dinner!

Tonight we sat with a family of ladies traveling together – Mom and one daughter live in California, the other daughter lives in McKinney and her daughter-in-law lives on Oahu. They all arrived from various places today. Mom and I both decided to go with the Regional Specialties Menu for dinner: Wurstsalat, Rösti, and a Plum Tart. I remember the Abels (my second host family in Germany) making Wurstsalat regularly (although I still pick out the raw onion). We enjoyed the Rösti so well on Mt Titlas that it was an easy pick for an entree. And the Plum tart was very good! After dinner we stopped for a quick Be Real picture, a cup of coffee (which, strangely they didn’t offer with dessert tonight) and made our way back to our stateroom.

During dinner, we noticed that the ship was moving – we didn’t feel a thing as we started sailing down the Rhein! The river is the border between France and Germany in this area:

While we were getting ready, the sounds outside turned strange. We couldn’t figure out what they were at first, but then realized – we were going through the first of the four locks tonight! We kept going down, down, down. It felt like 50 feet. Finally, we stopped and then slowly started moving forward.