Passau

Wednesday

Passau, it is known as the three river city. The Danube, Ilz and the Inn all merge there. We visited St. Stephan's cathedral first to hear an organ concert. The Organ was built in 1928 with over 17,000 pipes. 

 

Our guide was a teacher at the local university, he told us that Germans do not know the Sound of Music, he said that if they did they would notice the error in the song schnitzel with noodles. I thought that was funny because I ordered spaetzle with my meal instead of potatoes and they laughed. 

 

There have been many floods in Passau, the flood in 2013 was one of the worst. They needed to organize workers to help with clean up, which included a lot of college students. So they used Facebook to connect and set up the schedules. Now most of the first floors in buildings are no longer apartments. 

 

After the tour of Passau we went on a Bavarian Beer tour. It ended up being more of a visit to a farm that had been in the same family since the 1600s. The family does this for Viking and also books weddings there every weekend. They have horse jumping events there twice a year and about 60 horses boarded at their farm. They also have a saw mill. 

 

 

Regensburg

Tuesday

Today we traveled down the Rhine-Main canal to a point outside of Regensberg where we got on buses. It was about 40 minutes to Regensberg and our walking tour.  The town had Roman origins and a beautiful stone bridge. It was in the process of being redone and turned into a pedestrian only bridge across the Danube. The houses here are very colorful, so pretty next to the water and trees. The city itself has a population of 160,000.  Pope Benedict XVI  was a famous son of Regensburg. 

The Danube or Donue is the second longest river in Europe, originating in the Black Forest.

Little kids in a daycare, they were fascinated by the black man in our group.

 

 

We had a German feast for dinner and a galley tour.  

Nürnberg

Monday

We were up early this morning for our tour of Nürnberg. They bused us into town, it is a ways from the dock. We drove past many sites and walked in the old town with a little bit of shopping time in the end.

 

 

The cruise has been really good, lots of pampering and good food. It is relaxing to have them take care of everything, good call to have this on the end of the trip this time.