We woke in the morning to the sounds of the ship docking in Koln - Cologne, as you may know it.

Despite docking near the centre of town we were still bussed to our walking tour, a bus ride of nearly five minutes. Our tour guide, Manuel, was, in the best tradition of Emerald tour guides, both knowledgeable and humorous, and he talked a lot more than any of our previous guides.

I think he maybe tried to replace quality with quantity. Koln was not - how to say this politely? - the most interesting place we have visited on this trip. Perhaps we have been spoilt by the wonderful German cities we have seen already on this trip. Much of that is not the fault of Koln, it suffered badly in WW2 and many of the old buildings were destroyed. It still has some but they are few and far between.

However, they do have a number of fountains and each of them is intricately decorated with sculptures that tell a story.

Our walking tour ended at the undoubted highlight of Koln, the cathedral.

This took over 600 years to build, being started in 1248 and finished in 1880. At that point it was the tallest building in the world, a record it would hold for a mere four years.

It is a remarkable building, architecturally magnificent, amazingly detailed and well worth the visit. It is astounding that someone had the vision to build this 800 years ago.

Inside, all the English language guidebooks had been taken so I'm afraid we missed much of the detail. But we couldn't miss the stained glass windows. These were original as they had been taken down at the start of WW2, stored in the cellars for the duration and then put back up after the war.

There were also a number of impressive paintings and sculptures.

The cathedral also boasted a reliquary of at least one of the Three Wise Men.

The cathedral was vast, much bigger than Koblenz or St Giles in Edinburgh, the other two large old churches we've visited but its size made it seem less personal and spiritual than either of those.

After leaving the cathedral we enjoyed a Berliner (a jam doughnut), did a little shopping and then walked back to the boat along the waterfront.

No sooner had we sat down to lunch than the boat sailed. It is a long way to Amsterdam and we won't be there until tomorrow morning.

We spent some of the afternoon walking the top deck, some of it having an afternoon snooze and some of it in the pool.

We have discovered that the pool area is a great retreat when the loud Americans (sorry, Gwen) on the boat get too loud. We've been there several times and the one time a loud American ventured in she felt the water, proclaimed it was too cold and hasn't been seen since.

Despite it only being the second to last night of the cruise, it was the farewell dinner tonight. This meant getting dressed up again, although I noticed that most people were less formal than at the formal arrival dinner. All of the crew were introduced and given a suitable cheer.

For our after dinner entertainment, Benny presented a one man show called "Dancing Queen" where he dressed up like a certain other Benny and sang and danced ABBA songs as only a short, fat Welshman could.

Together with about half the other guests, we sang and danced along with him.

At one point in the evening, I popped up onto the top deck to take a photo in the fading light of the otherwise non-descript spot where Germany finally gave way to the Netherlands.