Day 29 Wednesday 26 June

Well great days cruising and meeting new people - we have got over the initial drones of the first few days and have a great time mixing again.
We are doing 2 towns a day at the moment and we also cruised the Rhine Gorge today, with commentary from our 'not-as-good-as-Sylvia' cruise Director Robert,so we are very busy.

 
Koblenz was nice at the 'confluence' of the Mainz and Rhine rivers and there was a great Castle on the hill above which has been redesigned and modernised to a Youth hostel with the greatest view. From here we did the Rhine Gorge and saw lots of old Castles, some of which were destroyed years ago.I dont think the Gorge lived up to all the hype. The Rhine Gorge is beautiful but without sun a bit hard to appreciate. 


 
We Australians are a bit of a laughing stock on the boat at the moment with the other countries curious as to how we can change our Prime Ministers back and forth so often! Roll on September sooner rather than later! 
 
Next we visited the charming little town of Rudesheim and visited a great Mechanical Musical Players Museum. One machine plays 19 instruments in one go from one pianola type roll.
Another plays 6 violins at once to play some of the well known pieces and of course a pianola - all well over 100 years old.
Sorry there are a lot of photos in this day! 














































































Beginning the Rhine Gorge with its castles and vieyards




















Lorelei Rock






The train is on both sides of the river because they cannot build bridges if they want to stay Heritage Listed. They look like churches where the tunnels start so that, in the war, the Allies would not bomb the tunnels.










































































Coming to Rudesheim

































The cieling in this very old building