I am sure it beats some of the entertainment available on the massive cruise ship. And come with the bonus you only have to share each other’s company for a few hours not weeks.
You couldn’t pay me to holiday on one of those 
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Is it a legal requirement? I didn’t get involved with flags during my brief stints, but up and dawn and down at sunset seemed to be strictly adhered to for whatever they were flying,
I don’t think courtesy ensigns are a legal requirement. It is just a respectful gesture to the country you are visiting.
Flag etiquette is sort of interesting, I once spent a week storm bound on a mooring with limited reading material so read up on it.
Your main ensign should only be flown in daylight and you take your cue from the most senior ship in port, If there is a Royal Navy ship in port you would follow their lead.
Then there is the whole thing with signal flags, there is one for every letter of the alphabet and number, A flag on its own has a specific meaning, if they are paired there is a very different meaning.
I used to know them all when I did my Yachtmaster quallification 40 years ago but can only remember 10 or so now The most common are the A flag (blue and white swallow tail) flown by dive boats, The Q flag (yellow) when you require customs and heath clearance.
I was once on a small yacht that was putting in to Dover.
As you can imagine on a small boat with a maximum speed of 4 knots and the amount of traffic in Dover this is not undertaken lightly.
We had no radio so flew the X over Y flags which had a specific meaning at Dover and meant that we required entrance to the port,
We were met by the harbourmaster launch, the skipper had a big grin on his face and escorted us to a mooring. He said it was the first time he had seen the correct flags used in 20 years and was delighted with the whole thing!
Nowadays if you didn’t have a marine radio you would use a mobile phone
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Most of what I saw was just flag of registration country (so lots of Cayman Isles etc), but wasn’t sure how much it was a legal requirement.
I think it is a legal requirement to fly your main ensign if you are in a foreign port or waters, which in the case of your type of boats would probably be most of the time!
Cancelled my travel insurance lads.
It was clear that for whatever reason (old and likely to die in an inconvenient place) they don’t want my business any more. The premium has gone up 55% and when I phoned to cancel the auto-renewal the whole process took ~10 seconds. I was definitely on a “do not haggle” list.
I won’t need it until the end of September at the earliest and I can already see another provider offering something sensible.
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Enjoy !
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Where?
(waits for obvious response)
Messonghi
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After being home a few days and decompressed, I’ll try to sum up the holiday;
Rong ™.
Loved the cities. Some have changed for the worse. Others were a revelation. Beautiful. Food was variable but generally pretty good value. Some epic feeds.
Beer and wine were excellent.
The real problem was transport.
We’ve always driven or flown in. Relying on rail timetables and busy routes sometimes requiring multiple changes just wasn’t enjoyable. Even when some serious planning was involved, there were too many variables. Most days were half day of travel or more. Seriously curtailing what time we had in each city. Also, some attractive sights along the way which we have missed out on due to not being able to stop and/or divert.
Too little control and, invariably, more stressful.
We saw this as a test and we now know that this isn’t for us.
If we want to do this sort of trip again, it’ll be a rental car.
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The next trip (apart from a few days in south Wales with family) is a week in Berlin in October.
Flying in. Central located hotel. Day trips planned, including a trip to Wittenberg.
I feel like this is more our thing. Walking about, stopping in bars, eating what we like, when we like. Walk back to hotel. Crash.
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Well this was mildly prophetic.
The various circumstances would have incurred a fee for splitting the tickets, and another fee for cancellations. You can’t cancel online because it’s BA Regional (or something) out of LCY and BA haven’t joined up the two systems because that would cost money.
So we just didn’t bother doing anything.
BA have however paid to develop a system that spots outbound no-shows and arbitrarily claws back the return leg without warning because they might be able to double bubble sell the seat again.
So the wife’s return leg tomorrow has this morning simply disappeared.
Currently appealing that this wasn’t mentioned when she phoned the first time about our options. Apparently they’re going back to listen to the recording.
I’d say I wouldn’t use BA again but they’re almost the only game in town for Belfast.
And the veg box turned up this morning while I was out at the newsagents. Chances of me having to monch through it on my own?
Which ones?
Colmar has a fantastically compact old town - Petite Venice. Very busy but beautiful.
Freiburg was more open but incredibly friendly and inviting. Lots to do and of course German food.
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