When we woke up it was pouring with rain. Our luck had held. We had eleven days of near perfect weather, despite ominous forecasts, but today we were going to Linz by boat so the weather didn’t matter.

There were two interior decks. Because there were relatively few passengers food and drinks were only being served on the upper deck. It was crowded, rowdy and smelly with some passengers heavily into beer even before the 9am departure.

We fled to the lower deck which was deserted apart from one other couple and commandeered the front table with a panoramic view of the scenery.

At lunchtime Margaret persuaded (coerced, bullied) a waiter to bring us a meal despite strict orders from the chef that meals weren’t to be served on our deck. A generous tip (by German standards where tipping is unusual) for the first course turned him into a willing accomplice. So it was nearly as good as our own stateroom.