River Cruise and Prague - 2025

  The Residenz Saturday, June 21 Slept late! 5:30. The sun was coming up when I reached the front deck. Slow progress on glassy – almost mirror-like – water, with forests coming down the hills right to the water. Could easily be Otsego County. The engine and the rotating radar dominate the soundscape; no birdsong, or at least none that I can hear. Looking forward to getting back on the roof deck, where it is quieter. Mist on the water, very slight ripples from the breeze catch the morning light. And a train whooshes by – bright red modern passenger train is here and gone. We've been in one valley or another since yesterday, and in each valley is the river, the road, and the railroad track at the bottom. And small villages anywhere the land flattens a little. White or tan houses with red roofs, many half-timbered, some with stepped roof lines or other flourishes. And that same simple church with the steep, elegant steeple. The one disadvantage of the front deck is that ...

  JUNE 23 Another fine morning, but it rained last night!  The first rain (or, for that matter, clouds of any type) of the trip.  The chairs were wet; I went inside ask for something to wipe them off, got a cloth, and sat down.  Luckily, this guy was on guard (right)*.  And suddenly the horn goes – it's right up here at the front, and very loud – at a kayak in the middle of the river ahead of us.  It didn't move, and we had to sail around it – it was abandoned, maybe lost its moorings in the storm last night. I slept late, and the sun is just above the horizon, competing for dominance of the sky with a bank of clouds on the horizon.  The sun's going to win.  Scattered clouds, light blue sky on the horizon ahead of us, strengthening into dark blue above.  Still a pastoral landscape, trees lining the river, truss bridge ahead of us casting an almost perfect reflection on the still water.   Locks are getting to be old hat by now; but t...

  JUNE 24 Cool and breezy, but pleasant; the dawn is gathering and lighting up a pastel blue sky with a few bumpy clouds, which might become pink in a few minutes, with any luck.  The Canal is a mirror.  Passing an industrial site, but can hear a Eurasian Blackcap and Common Chiffchaff according to Merlin, but I think Merlin is having me on about the Chiffchaff. And a great blue heron – or something very close to it – flies by past us, silently.  Suddenly we're on the Erie Canal for a moment.  A single bicyclist approaches and passes us, tiny light shining.   It's just before 5AM on moving day.  I put my suitcase and cane in its case outside the room as I left.  Luggage out by 7:30; we all leave a 8:30 for Nuremberg.  City tour, lunch at a restaurant in the city center, then board buses across the square, and three and a half hours on the bus to Passau, on the Danube.  We'll miss the corner again. Last night, when we were dropped of...