lairdandjonelle

Bummer, the cruise is almost over. Today in Cologne with the most fantastic cathedral I’ve ever seen! Amazing! Sorry for all my friends, but I’ve bought almost nothing — a little something for Theodore and Sia and three books about the cathedral and that’s about it. I don’t see anything changing in Amsterdam.

Tonight is the gala goodbye dinner, so I got my hair cut. And creamed and curled, teased, bunched and sprayed. I look pretty cool!

Tomorrow we’re in Amsterdam, have a canal tour, a windmill village tour and Amsterdam by Night tour, including the red light district — who doesn’t do that??? Next day off the boat. We’re all hoping getting to our hotel will be a hell of a lot easier than getting to the ship at start! I leave Monday with a really stupid schedule: back to Zurich for overnight, fly to Frankfurt, Atlanta, Denver and ABQ. We’ve had a great time cruising down (up) the river — I’ve loved being with Noekie and I love her friends — a great vacation, except for that flight home, or rather those five flights home.

Daniel, I’ll try to remember to tell you what dinner is tonight. I got your email. Others had trouble commenting, I don’t know why.

Have a Gala evening!

This is especially for Daniel, it’s what we ate at German Bistro night. So, let’s start — and we had ALL of them:
1. roast beef on tartar sauce and arugula leaves; wrap of smoked salmon, cream cheese and mustard-dill sauce; and quiche lorraine. 2. grilled bell pepper, eggplant and zucchini in tomato ragout with pesto and feta cheese; and potato soup. 3. veal cheek with root vegetables and veal jus; fillet of plaice (fish), filled with pommery mustard with saffron sauce; cheese noodle with sauerkrqaut and roasted onion. 4. black forest cake; chocolate and hazelnut mousse with mirabelle plums; and white passion, which is raspberry jelly and passion fruit jelly with white chocolate mousse.
It was QUITE delicious. The first wine, a pinot noir, not so good; the second wine was good, though I don’t know what it was; and I passed on the third wine since I’d also had two gins and tonic before dinner.

I skipped going to Heidelburg, hurt enough that I couldn’t get interested in it. Stayed on ship and read, drank lattes and slept. It was foggy all day long and cold. Just hope the weather is beautiful when we go through the Rhine gorge on Thursday, I think — that is supposed to be spectacular. Continued cool tomorrow, maybe rain — hope enough leaves stay on the trees to glow in the blue sky and sunshine that I’m sure the Universe will let us have through the gorge.

Missing the classical concert, so will sign off and go in. Thanks for reading!