TOT: Rhine river cruises

[Nightjar]

It wasn't so much the cost as thinking that they might be more orientated towards a British market.

[F]

Amen to that!!

[Capitol]

She never travels with less than 10 pairs of shoes.

[Nightjar]

...

I didn't visit Russia until after the fall of the Berlin wall, although they still had a bit of the Intourist approach of controlling everything you did. However, my experience of communist Yugoslavia was that good communists were all equals, so any service in an hotel was sparse and reluctantly given.

My thought was India; it sounds like the sort of legacy the Raj would have left behind.

[charles]

You mean warm beer and endless cups of tea? I didn't notice anything about Viking that was particularly for the Americans.

[stuart noble]

More to do with the sheer number of people descending on a small place like a cloud of locusts. Kind of destroys what you went there to see

[Chris J Dixon]

Although my ex-employer Bombardier never did have a written (or even unwritten) dress code, at one point a new relaxed one was formalised for the division in which I was working. There was no mention of gender, though it was clearly produced with men in mind:

Shirts must have a collar. No predominant logos or slogans. No blue denim. [other colours presumably OK] No trainers. Shorts permissible, but must be tailored.

This was for a trial period. Exactly what they would have done if they had eventually decided to discontinue it was unclear. Perhaps they would have had to define what we previously wore without compulsion.

As it happened there was no reversion. However, the company had several reorganisations of departments, and some parts of it were still firmly in the lounge suit era.

Interestingly, when we occasionally had corporate video presentations, practically all the global chiefs were tie-less. Indeed, when I used to visit company sites in Sweden or Germany, I generally dressed down (to UK standards) so as not to appear overdressed by theirs.

After too many years, I was happy to ditch the ties. Last time the subject came up I simply commented that I had signed off many official Design Certificates, for assorted rolling stock worth about £700 million, without my tie, and none of them had been rejected because of this.

I'm quite OK with not wearing ties, but really don't like to see the top button of the shirt still done up. Must be my age ;-)

In the past five years I think I have probably worn a tie twice, with my suit for weddings. I may have worn a casual jacket about as often.

Chris

[ARW]

So plan two holidays and save a fortune by staying at home.

[Nightjar]

...

While I would be quite happy with that, I don't think it would go down too well with the other half.

[DerbyBorn]

....and they are over-fed so they don't use the restaurants.

In Venice recently they felt absolutely entitled to block narrow walk-ways to listen to the guide.

[RobertL]

'The point' might have been to stop thieves from entering the hotel and getting up to the bedroom floors. Some hotels require your room card to operate the lift at the ground floor for exactly that reason.

Robert

[ARW]

Plan a couple of holidays without telling her:-)

I once "planned" a weekend away with the toss of a coin. Heads we turned left onto the Mway - tails we turned right onto the motoway. And same again when we reached another motorway. I ended up in Hull.

[dennis]

I didn't think we drank much beer here. There is plenty of beer at the xmas market in brum. Elsewhere its mostly ales.

[Nightjar]

ISTM that the things I didn't like about the trip; the over attentive staff and constant live music dominating the lounge were the very things that the Americans praised.

[fred]

Yes. We did the Nile Cruise some years back and thoroughly enjoyed it apar t from Tutankhamen's revenge which the whole boat got. Generally we keep to ourselves on holiday so were a bit nervous booking it but as I say the wh ole experience was enjoyable es[especially the company of the other passen gers. (All English).

Ive seen the Rhine cruise ships passing through Dusseldorf and they are ver y long but of necessity thin with it.

[Nightjar]

On 17/11/2014 16:25, fred wrote: ...

We managed to miss that, but we were ready for it. On a previous trip to Morocco, a tour guide had introduced to a marvellously effective cure available over the counter in Spain and we stocked up on that when we could. Unfortunately, when they introduced a new formulation (minus the antibiotics) it was no more effective than Diocalm.

We had a mix; about equal numbers of a Thompson's tour group, a German tour group and a number of independent travellers. We were among the latter, but most were Americans and we are still in contact with one American couple from that trip.

[tim.....]

Hah, he wasn't there every waking hour of the day

It was possible to sneak through and push the button yourself :-)

tim

[tim.....]

It was no different at Olympia.

Cos it isn't next to the sea I didn't twig that the hoards of foreigner tourist that I saw in the street/bars/cafe in the afternoon weren't staying over like I was.

It was only when I went out to dinner to find the place absolutely deserted (it was October) that I realised they were all on tours from cruise ships

tim

[tim.....]

I got the impression from a PP that the trip was on the same boat, just organised by the different tour company, the difference in price just paying for the level of organisation (and a rip off profit).

This is normal for Nile cruises, booked directly these can cost you a quarter of the UK based tour company prices

tim

[tim.....]

why did you stop, it isn't a dead end :-)

tim