Travel Live: Cruise christening duties
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This week, Travel Editor and river cruising novice Winston Aldworth is sailing down the Rhine on the maiden voyage of Avalon Imagery II. The brand new ship is 110m long and can carry up to 128 passengers. On this ‘christening cruise’, the passengers are travel-industry types and travel writers – they’re joined by Judy Bailey, who’s doing the christening duties. Winston will file updates throughout the cruise.
Guten tag from Weisbaden! Stepping aboard the Avalon Imagery II this morning, I noted what I can only presume river cruise regulars would recognise as ‘that new ship smell’.
Everything looks mint. There’s a bit of excitement as groups arrive, find their rooms and get settled in. We’ll be sailing on Tuesday morning (NZT) after taking a look at the local surroundings.
Two new things for me here: First river cruise, and first blog for a blog novice. Feel free to email me (polite) tips on either at Winston.aldworth@nzherald.co.nz.
First point of difference between a river cruise and the ocean variety: You get off a lot. Straight after stowing my gear I went back to dry land for a trip to the Gutenburg Museum, which celebrates the work of Johannes Gutenburg inventor of the modern printing press… oh dear, you’re reading this online aren’t you…
I’ve done a couple of cruise ships journeys on ocean-going ships, and you can spend a couple of days exploring yet never knowing the labyrinthine paths of the giant vessels. But a river ship? You can walk every path on board in less than 10 minutes. Which, I guess, makes it even more imperative to get off the ship and take a walk on shore as discussed previously.
Here’s a video of my room:
A video posted by Herald Travel (@nzhtravel) on Apr 3, 2016 at 3:17pm PDT
Back at the ship, we’ve just wrapped up evening cocktails ahead of a big day tomorrow.
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