Tauck Romantic Rhine

We sailed on the MS Grace from Basel to Amsterdam on September 1, 2017.

We took this cruse for our 25th anniversary. We have been on Tauck once before, a land tour of England Scotland and Wales.

We are from Rochester, New York. I am 57, my husband is 61. We went with friends who are 58 & 61.

I would say that we were towards the younger end of the people on the cruise, but we had a wonderful time and everyone we met was very interesting and age really did not matter.

The only problems we had did not have anything to do with the cruise. We have used the same travel agent since our first trip after we were married. She sent us a note in March 2017 that she was leaving the industry. So that was very upsetting. The new travel agent is fine, but I am not sure if we will stick with her or find someone new.

And my husband was informed in August that his manufacturing company will move to China in June 2018.

We decided since we had paid for everything that we would go on our trip and enjoy ourselves.

We booked our own air, it was cheaper and more direct to fly from Toronto. We flew KLM from Toronto to Amsterdam to Basel. (Our friends used their frequent flyer miles on American; they went Toronto to Chicago to Heathrow to Basel)

We did upgrade to economy plus, I have a hip replacement and get very stiff if I don’t have plenty of leg room. We checked business class, but it was very expensive. I think our tickets ended up being about $1100 round trip, we booked our own air.

We all agree that this was the best vacation we have every taken. Every port was interesting, and we loved spending two days in Amsterdam after the cruise.

We have been on ocean cruises and feel that this room was nicer. It was small, but organized out very well. We had a room with a French Balcony, but did not spend much time in the room. We preferred to be up on the top deck. There was a bit of rain in Basel, but the rest of the cruse had great weather.

Tauck took care of everything, and we were pampered. I saw some discussion about the food, all the meals were delicious. The soups were some of the best I have ever had. Every night there was a regional specialty, all of which were excellent. Our chef was Dutch, and very enthusiastic. She gave an update every night during cocktail hour about what she was making for dinner. We also had lunch in Arthur’s several times and that was very good too. We do like to eat and there are some very good restaurants and wines in our area (Finger Lakes). We were not disappointed.

I did save all of the daily news sheets and will try to scan them. I only took one picture of the menu; we usually charged our phones during dinner so I kept forgetting to take pictures.

I am sorry I did not write this up sooner, but am happy to answer any questions.

Mary

I did save all of the daily news sheets and will try to scan them. I only took one picture of the menu; we usually charged our phones during dinner so I kept forgetting to take pictures.

Sounds like you had a great cruise! Hope your sojourn in China is a great experience for both of you. With regard to scanning the dailies, it's a great thing to do for those taking the cruise in the future. I recommend scanning them to pdfs or jpgs and the posting them on a site like dropbox or google documents. Then you can post the link to the documents here.

I can’t wait to see your notes!

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Here are the daily programs, the activity choices and two dinner menus. (Sorry for the poor picture..)

Tauck MS Grace The Romantic Rhine 1-8 September 2017

Daily Programs:

Day 1 Basel

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IUS75bI3B8RGLY8yXPcXoEBkjX0vxC_f/view?usp=sharing

Day 2 Lucerne & Riquewihr

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BR9qprEx1zjB8gCA9V2wiUat5Lu7FAFE/view?usp=sharing

Day 3 Strasbourg & Baden-Baden

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VauKi5POTmgrpVtAV7UTSGtV9RwB8C6J/view?usp=sharing

Day 4 Speyer & Heidelberg

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gKLjtQRvZm-w8-fQJ8V4IuoWphPiotrU/view?usp=sharing

Day 5 Koblenz and Middle Rhine Valley

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iKZCE1rnjUai4RIYN8-ssqTF-2A5ft6W/view?usp=sharing

Day 6 Cologne

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lgLcnymLGH-rcJEYXDtRrp_tyt0VJrtP/view?usp=sharing

Day 7 Amsterdam

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gqY-L6VFX5CMQGhqc1q5qS32xEOLltlX/view?usp=sharing

Daily Activity Choices

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YsKjB9gq54H0W65sh6YRH1-M2aBam1uv/view?usp=sharing

Dinner Menu 1 September 2017

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10rgaMCFoI_Dq-TJfrsdvhjwx3iB40BSA/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x6HY9GwZy75_ct6pYRf7HMkpqw-abcWf/view?usp=sharing

Schloss Ehreshoven Dinner Menu 5 September 2017

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1temmBxcia97d2mIHB17My_PIw1Z8_ZCJ/view?usp=sharing

I’m doing the 13 day Rhine and Moselle, so obviously different but this is very helpful to see an advance preview!

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Thanks for posting the dailies! These are a great help to folks considering a river cruise. I was particularly impressed by all the excursions Tauck offers. I assume that none of these cost anything, but were included in the cruise price.