Friday December 22: Heidelberg/Miltenberg
Lucking Out with the Weather
Last night I had the best night’s sleep so far on this trip. It was almost normal. I seem to be over the worst of the cold. It isn’t gone yet, but I seem to be on the mend. We just docked, and we have about an hour before we leave on the buses.
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We sort of lucked out with the weather. The weather was going to be wet, so once again I wore my thick fleece shirt and my red fleece jacket. I was a little cold at the start, but OK overall.
We took a 60-90 minute bus ride to Heidelberg. The first thing we did there was to have lunch. I thought it would be better to delay it, but that would have screwed up the schedule. We basically took over the entire brewery restaurant. They also had a student join us at each table. Our student ended up being Indian. My understanding was that the beer there was really good, but since I don’t care for beer, I had apple juice.
After lunch, there was an optional activity followed by free time for the Christmas market. You could go up to the ruins of the castle on a tour. Or you could go on a historic tour of the town. Or you could skip these and just spend more time in the Christmas markets. We went to the castle.
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It wasn’t that high up (for me), but we took the funicular/tram up. When we left the station, it had begun to rain lightly, so we pulled out our umbrellas. As we walked to the edge of the terrace to get a view of the river and city, it got rather windier. It was a real challenge to manage the umbrella and a camera in a gusty wind. I ended up inverting my umbrella 3 or 4 times. It still closes, but I don’t think it will ever be quite the same.
A bit later the rain tapered off, so we put our umbrellas away.
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Most of the castle is ruins, but one of the buildings has been restored. We went into the ground level there, to see the world’s largest wine cask. We went in and saw this humongous cask, mounted on its side. Its staves were 5-6 inches square. I’m guessing it was 8-10 feet in diameter. After we oohed and ahhed a bit, our guide said, “This is the small one. Do you want to see the big one?” That one was around the corner. It was maybe 15-20 feet in diameter. They built a small dance floor on top of it. Our guide wasn’t sure that they had ever filled it.
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Afterwards we went back down the funicular. Then it was market time. We had about 1 1/4 hours to explore. Personally, I would have been happier if the tour had been a bit shorter and the market time a bit longer.
We first spent probably 10-15 minutes trying to find an ATM. They we did a whirlwind tour of the Christmas markets. Amy and I actually like the one the previous night (Mainz?) better.
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Amy got a “snowball” pastry. I picked up some Christmas ornaments at the very expensive ornament shop (Kathe Wohlfahrt). Annoyingly, they had given us a coupon for 3% off at the shop, but I remembered it all the time except for when I was paying for the ornaments. So we didn’t get the discount. Then we visited another store and I got a new plush friend. I couldn’t find any bears that appealed to me, but they had a cute wombat that wanted to come home with me.
At this point, we were beginning to run out of time. We walked a few blocks to the river. Then we went back towards the bus location, stopping to take some pictures of the old bridge and some pictures of the castle from the old bridge. We got back to the buses with about 5 minutes to spare.
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Then we had a 1-1/2 hour drive to where we would meet the boat. This was on more rural back-roads. We drove up the river valley for a while, then we turned left and went up and over the ridge to the next valley. It would have probably been picturesque, except that outside of the bus essentially everything was black.
When we got to the boat and got off of the busses, it started raining for real. We didn’t want to pull out our umbrellas just for such a short time, but there was a bottleneck getting people over the gangplank. After a short delay, we got on the boat, where it was warm and dry.
As soon as everyone was on board, we unmoored and started up the river. It was now raining steadily. We were really glad that the rain hadn’t started earlier, particularly when we were going through the Christmas markets.
There is a small “Aquavit Lounge” at the bow of the ship. They had scheduled an “explorer’s club” gathering of people who had been on a cruise before. We were invited. It turns out that the gathering completely overflowed into the main lounge, as almost half the people on the boat had been at least once before. I think one couple had been 9 times before.
In case we hadn’t already eaten and drunk enough, we were handed a flute of champagne, and they came around with various hor’dourves. While we were sitting there, we saw that we went under another low bridge. It was hard to see clearly because it was dark outside and still raining, but it looked like there wasn’t a whole lot of clearance between the top of the boat and the bottom of the bridge. (We had noticed when we left this morning that the top of the boat had been flattened, e.g. the railings were dropped and the chairs were removed.)
Andrew, the tour manager, came on the PA and gave us the briefing on tomorrow’s activities. He also mentioned the bridge we had just passed under. It hadn’t been clear whether we would have passed under it or not, because of the high water and the rain. Even more interesting was the low bridge from yesterday morning. We had gotten under it, but apparently one of our sister ships, which was trying to get under it a short while later couldn’t make it, so they were stuck and doing a lot more bussing. I hadn’t realized how close we had come to a major realignment of our trip. Like I said, we lucked out with the weather.
The Aquavit lounge doubles as a micro-dining room. Since we had a table there (actually half of a table for 4), we stayed there for dinner. The menu is the same as in the main dining room, but Amy found it pleasantly quieter than the main room.
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The couple that we were dining with was going to make an early night of it. They had scratchy throats and thought they were coming down with a cold. I had also heard another woman talking to someone and saying that she didn’t feel well at all. I think that there is some sort of cold going through the passengers here. I think it is cold and not Covid. I’m not over it, but I am a lot better than I was yesterday. I hope that Amy manages to avoid it.
We were supposed to get a glass blowing demonstration in the evening, but apparently the glass blower had had a heart attack two days ago. We were told that he was OK, but he obviously wouldn’t be doing the demo.
Tomorrow will be the first (and I think only) time on this trip and Amy and I are separating. I’m going on a day-long excursion vaguely similar to today’s (get bussed a ways in the morning, have lunch there, do some tours, and then get bussed back to the boat at a different location). Amy opted not to do this. She will have a mellow morning. After the boat arrives at the day’s destination, she will visit the Christmas markets in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the weather should be similar to today’s. The weather forecast I pulled up was sort of contradictory. It said occasional showers, but then there was a heavy rain advisory.
Now it is time to head back to the cabin and hit the sack. Hopefully, I’ll sleep as well as I did last night.