We had a free morning this morning till the bus collected us to take us to our River Boat. We had big plans to go walking in the nearby park and do some more exploring of Zurich but the day was freezing cold, grey and raining so we just had a lazy morning hanging around the hotel till we caught the bus around 1pm.
This took us on a one and a half hour journey to Basel where we found our boat, the Scenic Jasper. The docking area was rather depressing being alongside a huge waste recycling area. The vista with mountains of broken wine bottles and a large crane moving great chunks of shredded metal with a grab like you see in arcade machines, was very reminiscent of a scene from a Mad Max movie.
On the plus side, our boat is shiny, new and beautiful. On the negative, however, Scenic have introduced a new system whereby your guide can talk to you through an App on your mobile phone. Our first hour on board was spent in a total shambles as the crew tried, mainly unsuccessfully, to teach the octogenarians, who seem to make up the bulk of the passengers, how to load and use the App.
Things took an even darker turn when the Cruise Director announced there would be a surprise entertainment which turned out to be a couple playing the cow bells and leading the group in the community singing of songs like Edelweiss and Roll Out the Barrel. Talk about Saturday afternoon in the nursing home. We retreated towards the bow and ordered more drinks.
However, dinner was excellent, our cabin is lovely and the staff are really nice so hopefully I will survive the next fortnight.
Hardys’ Travels 