My husband & I recently returned from the early September sailing of the River Ambassador on the Treasures of Prague, the Rhine & Main. This was one of the best vacations we've ever had (maybe because it was the first one by ourselves without our daughters who are now in college?). We have cruised on large ships (Carnival out of Galveston and an Alaskan cruise on Holland American), but have only traveled out of the country to London and Costa Rica. We plan to cruise with Uniworld again. We were curious about the age group of passengers on the cruise. I would guess the average age was the lower 70's, maybe upper 60's. My husband and I are 50 & 52. We did meet several other couples who were near our age and part of what made the cruise such a great experience were the passengers we met and enjoyed spending time with.

We arrived at Dusseldorf airport around 7:45 AM, on time via Lufthansa. It was fairly easy to find our way to baggage claim. We did stop and ask if there was an ATM on our way to baggage (and it's best to refer to the ATM as a cash machine or in German as Geldautomat), but the ATM's are located after you pass through the secure doors after getting your luggage. We easily found the Uniworld representative after collecting our bags and exiting through the sliding doors to the unsecured area of the airport. She checked us off her list, showed us where the ATM was and instructed us to meet them in about 10-15 minutes at the Ronald McDonald benches a little further down. We had time to use the ATM to get Euros, buy a quick coffee and pastry, then waited a short time for the rest of our bus load. Our bus wasn't full, but they were retrieving people off several different flights that arrived around the same time I doubt anyone waited more than 20 minutes after retrieving luggage.

It was a fairly short ride to Cologne, but there was a bicycle race through downtown Cologne that morning. Our bus driver had a hard time because the normal route had roads closed due to the race. We circled the area around the cathedral trying to find open roads. He eventually dropped us off across the street from where the boat was docked because he couldn't get any closer with the bus. We retrieved our bags from under the bus, walked across the street and found our ship a little ways down the paved sidewalk along the river. As soon as the crew saw us arriving they rushed up the gangway to collect our bags. It was around 9:30 AM when we boarded the ship and found beverages, pastries and fruit in the lounge as well as several other passengers stretched out, napping an the banquettes. Read more