Our Viking adventure on the Rhine River started out with some initial concerns, about 5 days before we arrived in Amsterdam we received an email from Viking stating that the pier they normally dock at in Amsterdam was not available and we would be joining the boat Mani at Coenhaven Dock. The day before we were to leave for the ship we received another email saying our ship would not be back from it's current trip to meet us in time so they were changing us to the Ship Eir. Well, that did not sound to bad, assuming the new ship was similar quality as the Mani.
When we left the apartment to go to the ship the taxi driver had no idea where the new dock was. After much jabbing on his GPS and I-Pad he found it and all went well. The Eir is the sister ship to the Mani and what had happened was that due to the heavy storms we had experienced last week the upper river areas also experienced the same storms causing the river level to rise such that the Mani was not able to cross under some bridges on it's return trip from Basel. What will happen is that we will take the Eir up to the point where the Mani is and we will be transferred to it while those passengers will be transferred to our ship.
We left Amsterdam around 11:30pm last night and arrived in Kinderdijk, today, Saturday, May 9, 2015 around 10:00 am. Kinderdijk is a historic UNESCO World Heritage Site, consisting of numerous windmills. The majority of The Netherlands is reclaimed land, land that originally was under water. By using the windmills they were able to pump the water into adjacent ponds thus drying out land sections and making them useable for farming.
With the internet speed and continually being bumped off I doubt if I will be able to show pictures.
It is currently Sunday morning and we are approaching Cologne, Germany today. We will be doing two excursions, a Palace visit and a walking tour of town. All is well and the weather has been windy with occasional showers. I have been amazed at the amount of river traffic there is on the Rhine. Numerous barges with containers as well as low cargo ships carrying ???.
Doug, I did a wheel house visit last night and was told they have 5 diesel CAT generators, two for the engines and two for lights, etc and the last for electronics. Not sure how they are connected but the engines are running at 380 Volts, probably a 240V Wye system. They also have several 120 Volt receptacles in our room. Ship was christened in January so it is the latest technology. I do not see any smoke from the diesel stack so not sure what types of fuel they are using. Crew member said they were heavily filtered.
Later,
Shirl and Roger
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