Sunday October 14 (Koblenz)

I ate breakfast in my suite again and then went up top. It was another glorious day but it was quite cool first thing and there had obviously been a heavy dew. 

Once again, due to low water affecting our speed we were running late. The excursions would leave the boat at 11.30 am, we arrived at 10.45 so the guys who tie up were very busy.

It was very pleasant cruising along the Rhine, our last time on the Crystal Debussy as at Koblenz we would take our journey onto the Moselle. 

We passed some pretty villages and the housing style was different to previously. The villages seemed very quiet, and then I remembered it was a Sunday, lol! 

The one neat thing about this morning was seeing hills again, lol! We were seeing some villages perched up high as well.

As we approached Koblenz, we could see the cable cars that pass over the Rhine up to a fortress on the left hand side. 

There was a huge statue at the entrance to Koblenz on a point between the two rivers, it was of Emperor Willhelm I. 

We travelled along the Moselle for a short distance passing several few cruise boats already tied up. We tied up to a sister boat, Crystal Bach, and had to walk through Bach from Debussy to get ashore. 

It was a delicate piece of manoeuvering by the captain!
We waited in our groups and were going to the cable cars and fortress.

I decided not to go to the fortress but instead walk to a high viewing platform. one of the first thing we saw was this life like model that looked as if it was going to jump, lol!

It was quite a long walk to the cable car but it was worth it, the views from the car were awesome, the weather certainly helped, lol! 

At the top it was again quite a walk to the viewing platform but well worth it. There were quite a few people up there taking advantage of the lovely day.

I travelled back down and wandered back to the boat. I was very thirsty so a glass of cold sparkling water preceded lunch, the oven baked flatbread! 

I wandered back to my room and then went up top to enjoy the cruise up river. Two more excursions departed at 2.30 pm and the buses would meet up further upstream.


We were not far out of Koblenz when we met our first lock, one of many on the Moselle, this is how the water level is controlled and why the river is still open to cruise boats.

There was only 45 centimetres difference between the width of our boat and the width of the lock so we did occasionally brush against the side, lol! 

Once we were inside the lock and the gates closed, the water rose quite dramatically, we certainly went up in the world!

We then cruised along and saw many terraces, lots of vineyards and I think fruit trees, the people certainly use the land productively as there is virtually no flat land in the valley. 

We also passed under a very low bridge and were advised not to stand up!!


I returned to my room about 5 pm as I wanted to do all my dirty washing. 

Once I sorted the machines out all went well apart from my cat boat T-shirt which got stained as a pod broke open! 

However, I told reception, they took it and it was returned to me by my butler, housekeeping had removed the stain and ironed it, lol! Octavian will do the rest of my ironing for me, I could get used to this!

As I was late showering, I ordered dinner in my room, I selected the cold water lobster, it was rather nice, lol!! During dinner we stopped at another lock and there would be more stops overnight.