Friday: October 4
Bamberg, Quiet Day
Today was a quiet morning, as we had no excursions until after lunch.
I think I have a bit of a scratchy throat. I’m not sure if I’m coming down with a cold or not. So I slept in until 8. Amy got up a bit earlier and went out so as not to disturb me. After I got up, I found Amy, and we got breakfast. We both had the French toast this time.
We had about 30-45 minutes to kill before a presentation about the Main-Danube canal, so I went back to the room to lay down for a bit. Then I got up, joined Amy, and watched the presentation. There are some fairly interesting locks that we will be going through, but it seems that we will be doing so in the middle of the night. I, certainly, do not plan to stay up to see them.
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Then we had lunch, I got changed, and we left for the excursion. I wore my heavy fleece shirt and raincoat, and I packed my down vest and some umbrellas, as well as our rain hats. I was a bit warm, so I put my raincoat into my pack.
Our weather luck deserted us today. On the bus ride to Bamberg, we caught periods of rain, so when we got there, I put on my raincoat. Then it started sprinkling on us, so I put on my rain hat. I never dug out my umbrella, however. The rain continued off and on for about 15-30 minutes for the first half of the tour.
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The tour was essentially the same as what we got in December, except that it continued on into the rose garden, which wasn’t of interest in December. Afterwards, we had more than 2 hours of free time before we had to be back at the buses. This seemed to me a very long time, and I was a bit paranoid that we had gotten the time wrong, but we eventually ran across some people from our boat, and they confirmed that we had the right time.
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Amy and I first spent some time exploring the cathedral. We couldn’t do this last time because it was Christmas Eve, and the cathedral was packed, with Christmas Eve Mass about to start. Afterwards, we wandered back down to the river. We found another “wine bridge”. At a previous stop, they talked about a bridge where the locals tended to buy some wine, and then go out onto the bridge to drink it. In Bamberg, we found a bridge where there were many people standing around, enjoying the scenery and drinking glasses of wine.
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We continued around through a shopping district doing a little shopping. Then we stopped at an ice cream shop and we got a pair of cones. Their cones were quite interesting. They looked like sugar cones, but they had a texture more like wafer cones. It seemed to have two layers with chocolate between them. They were quite good.
After that, we crossed back over the bridge and walked down along the river, across from some very picturesque buildings, taking a lot of pictures. Then we crossed back and walked a few blocks to where the buses were. We were a few minutes before the deadline, but we seemed to be among the last people to arrive, because the bus left a little early, shortly after we got on board.
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I started writing up today’s events. We are going through a very tall lock, and Amy is taking a very long time-lapse video of the process. If I tried that, my arms would fall off long before the process was finished.
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Famous last words. After dinner, I went up to the lounge, and I happened to notice that we were just entering a lock. So I dashed to the front of the boat and started doing another time lapse. I figured out a way I could occasionally swap arms without jostling the camera too much (and without dropping the camera). I managed to go the whole way through the lock and keep my arms intact.
Tonight’s activity is some sort of dance contest. When I came in from my time-lapse, I saw that the thing was already under way, and that Amy was apparently part of a team and was grooving on the dance floor. Personally, I’m just as happy I missed the start and am just an observer.