After the electrical storm last night we woke up to a clear blue sky.

We had a video chat with everyone at home and then packed up and set off on the next leg of our adventure. The first stop wasn't far away, a brief visit to Muhlehorn, on the lake at the bottom of our road.

Then it was an hour's drive back to Zurich airport. We expected this to be a straightforward reversal of our journey here two days ago but Google had others plans.

Taking us back up the other side of Obersee, it dealt with a 15km gap in the A15 motorway in typical Google fashion, directing us through ever narrower roads until we drove through a farmyard and then past a girl with her horse. At least it did send us past a village petrol station with cheapish petrol. Back on the A15, we were back at the airport, rental car dropped off and into the mayhem of finding our cruise representatives.

Find them we did, repeating the convenient lie that we had flown in from London that morning (it is a long story) and they despatched us on a minibus to our river cruise ship. The driver was a delightful Swiss man named Tony who reminded a lot of Walter. It must be a Swiss thing. Part of Tony can be seen loading our luggage into the minibus in this photo.

This was supposed to be a one hour transfer to Basel but southern Germany has suffered huge flooding over the last week and the Rhine is running at levels not seen for the past 10 years. Our boat couldn't make it up to Basel so we were bussed down to Mannheim in Germany, a four hour trip.

The normally seamless crossing of the border between Switzerland and Germany was a bit slower today as there is the European Football Champs happening and the border guards insisted on looking into every vehicle. Luckily, none of us looked English.

It was a pleasant drive, as four hour drives go, we slept for much of it and survived a stop at some German roadside services where Tony came to the rescue when it was discovered that none of his passengers had the requisite one euro coin required to use the facilities.

We also drove past a building that dominated my life for 25 years - the headquarters of SAP in Walldorf. I woke up in time to see it but not in time to take a decent photo.

We arrived at the boat, the Emerald Dawn, at a dock in the industrial area of Mannheim just before 5pm.

We unpacked as we will be on the boat for a week and then explored the vessel. It was nearly empty.

Our cabin was on the port side of the boat (a trap that experienced cruisers would not have fallen for) and had a good view of the warehouse next to the dock.

With the change in itinerary, the cruise line had offered a refund to anyone not wanting to travel and we wondered whether we might be in a small minority who decided to continue. But no, at 7pm two full size bus loads arrived and the briefing and dinner had to be pushed back to process them.

Dinner was very nice and set the standard for our three meals a day for the next week.

Somehow, amidst all the Canadian and American couples on the boat (but no sign of HMMAW, alas) we managed to sit next to another New Zealand couple.

After dinner we strolled on the Sun Deck. The sunset over the Rhine was impressive.