Bernie and Linda's Blog: On the Boat.

After another day of planes, trains and busses we arrived in Passau, Germany. The interconnection of transportation in Europe is excellent. We took the train to Gatwick, only 10 kilometres from Bacombe then an EasyJet flight to Munich. A quick bus ride to the nearby town of Friesing to catch the train to Passau.

The train ticketing systems are automated and the multilingual machine are easy to use. We had to make some inquiries at the EasyJet customer service to make sure we understood their system. EasyJet has no check in counters. One has to arrive at the airport with a boarding pass, on your phone or on paper. We used the electronic pass and it worked well. There is a drop off counter for checked in luggage. If you have carry-on only you just go through security to the boarding lounge.

Things haven’t gone quite so smoothly with the bike/barge trip.

Our instructions were to contact the local tour operator in order to find out the location of the boat. However; neither of the phones numbers provided would work. We walked around the docks looking for the boat that should have arrived earlier. I sent an email to the tour company with whom we had booked. Because of the time difference, they were closed and I could not call the. Eventually I phoned another tour company in Holland, who also booked tours on this boat. They were very nice and they took time to contact the boat for us. It turned out the the boat was behind schedule due to mechanical issues. At least now, we knew that the boat was arriving late in the afternoon.

The US booking company called us as soon as they saw our email. They gave us the correct number for the tour guide and we were able to determine when and where we would board the boat. We are our way to the dock a little later than expected and departed only a few minutes a late.

Due to the limited loading and preparation time the crew was less organized than they might normally have been. We felt for a while than we were in a “Faulty Towers” episode, especially at dinner time. The ship’s crew got back on track fairly quickly but the bike tour director has been, and still is, struggling with the task. He seems to new at the job and completely out of his element. He does not even have a remote knowledge of the scheduled rides. I could go on and on but despite his incompetence we are having a good time.

The first 2 days riding were in good weather conditions...sunny but not too hot with broken cloud. The first ride was very easy along the river trail. 35 k. The second ride had an optional route away from the river through rolling farmland. 46k. We opted for this route. There were a couple of good climbs.

Today however we awoke to steady rain. At the ride briefing the tour guide showed up and started briefing us as if no one would think of riding in the rain. He was totally shocked when almost half of the passenger were ready to go.

Despite the rain, the ride was fun. 50 k. We were all laughing about the conditions. We stopped at a nice cafe for coffe about half distance and then at a restaurant at the end of the route. We all had a good time. It was very nice to jump in a hot shower when we got back to the cabin.