In addition to my musings about “rollin’ on the river,” you may want to see those of the other DrC here, here and here. She captures some dimensions of the experience better than I do. She has a photographer’s eye and a woman’s sensibility that is intrigued by different things than those which interest me.
She is absolutely correct that we’ve done this trip several times and enjoyed it each time. This trip we haven’t felt the need to go poke about in the little (and big) cities along the way as we’ve “been there, done that” on previous visits.
We are enjoying being pampered by Viking’s excellent staff, mostly drawn from Eastern Europe. It is a sinfully luxurious experience, they smilingly do all the work, we smile back at them in evident enjoyment, and the mood is excellent.
Late yesterday we cycled through some amazing locks that you wouldn’t believe if you haven’t seen them. Imagine your ship sails into a concrete-walled canyon perhaps two feet wider than your ship and perhaps 40-50 feet taller. I looked up and it felt like being at the Narrows in Zion National Park or the narrow canyon leading to Petra in Jordan, a strip of sky waaaay up there and me down at the bottom.
Then the gates close, the water flows in, and a few minutes later you sail out of the lock looking down at the top edges you formerly craned your neck to look up at. It is a surreal experience totally unlike transiting the Panama Canal in a cruise ship. And this amazing lifting of our quite long, skinny ship is done with no fuss, nothing special in the way of obvious exertion.
It is a dramatic version of the old adage that a rising tide lifts all boats, although “tide” isn’t what did the deed here. I wouldn’t be surprised if these locks are a unique experience unmatched anywhere on the planet for total lift accomplished by a single lock.
Later … We are cruising through an area where some of the churches have onion domes, I’ve seen the same thing in Switzerland. They aren’t Eastern Orthodox, whose onion domes are legendary, I don’t know what it means.
This part of Bavaria is heavily forested, called the Black Forest although small villages do occur. The river banks and hillsides are covered with a mix of deciduous and conifer trees, and not so densely ‘occupied’ as is most of Europe. I like this area.
BTW, we just passed a canal side pasture with something like 40 white swans sitting in it. My thought was, at least it is close to their beloved water, which water isn‘t so very busy this far from Amsterdam. Earlier this morning we passed a marina that had been excavated off to one side of the river/canal, lots of pleasure craft but this early in the season not a lot of activity.
