Our stateroom was on the main deck very handy to the main reception area, big enough andwith plenty of storage. Our butler turned out to be a glorified steward in a suit, pleasant enough. He organized my early morning cup of tea to be brought to the cabin by room service.
We sailed off into the night and traversed the canal linking the Baltic and North seas from Kiel to Hamburg. It was idyllic with a lot of birdlife, lush green landscape and tidy brick houses with their gardens facing the canal. Most cruise ships are too big to get through the canal and ours was not so people waved, stopped their cars to take photos of the ship.
On to Amsterdam (bikes everywhere) the next day where we spent the morning in the Van Gogh museum - mindboggling with its great variety of paintings on display and other exhibitions of works by his contemporaries and documentation on one of his patrons.
From there a day at sea then on to Rouen where we visited the cathedral which Monet painted so many times. Sought out the art gallery and took the photo (permitted) and looked at several others of his paintings. Rouen had narrow streets of beautifully painted old houses right in the centre, a famous gateway with a very old clock, a very new Joan of Arc church with amazing architecture inside and out. Dieter took lots of ordinary photos as he lost his digital camera a few weeks before we left, so it is all (still) only in "my mind's eye"
