October 8 - Embarkation

What a way to start the day!  As we were packing up to head off to the airport to meet up with the Danube River cruise, the fire alarm went off. It happened at the exact same moment that we were opening the room safe. It took a couple of moments for us to realize that the alarm was not a burglary alarm that we had set off but rather was a hotel wide fire alarm. It turned out to a non-event, and we were back in the hotel in about 30 minutes. We travelled by bus to the city of Regensburg and embarked onto the Scenic Ruby for our trip. The German highway was smooth and very quick. There was a lot of truck traffic but it never slowed us down, unlike driving on the 401 through Toronto.

View of Regensburg for dock

The Scenic Ruby is a luxury river cruise ship. Scenic has provided us on past cruises with five star-service at an all-inclusive vacation price. The capacity for the boat is around 160 guests, with a crew of about 55 staff that, ensures a high staff-to-guest ratio.

All the cabins feature “sun lounge” balconies that can be used in any weather, and all come with butler It is nice to empty the room bar and not have to worry about the price. All the suites have luxury bedding, flat-screen TVs, minibars, and modern bathrooms. You do have to be careful when going to the bathroom because it is easy to stub your toe on the small step into the bathroom.

There is a beautifully decorated dinning room and a special dinning room called Portobellos where your dinner comes with a wine pairing. It also contains a spacious lounge, where you can enjoy a drink.

There are going to be 11 of us on this cruise. Most of friends from the Celebrity cruises are here, but we are missing Trudy and Jay. Bob is our resident cynic and comedian. Tonight, he put his foot into it by saying he thought Janet was Olive’s daughter. Excuse me, Bob, but they are sisters. Funeral services for Bob will be held tomorrow.

We had our dinner in the Portobello dining room. The Italian 5 course meal was delicious and the service outstanding. Hopefully we can have another opportunity to dine there.

Tonight, there was a German Omp-Pah band in the lounge, but we were too busy have fun to pay attention to them.