Saturday: October 5
Nuremberg (Nurmberg), What We Didn’t See Last Time
We’ve reached the halfway point of the trip. We met our
doppelgänger ship going in the opposite direction. Also, it is not coincidentally
the one week mark in our two week journey.
Today was essentially what the last cruise wasn’t. On that trip,
we had 30 minutes to run around the closed city and see what we could see. This
time, things were open, and we had a real tour and lots of free time.
We took a number of buses to Nuremberg, and like the last time
got sort of a drive-through of the Zeppelin fields and past some other Nazi
megaliths. Then, instead of going to the center of the old town like we did
last time, we were let off near the “castle”. This is at the top of the hill,
which I climbed rapidly with great exertion last time. This time, I wore my
heavy shirt, down vest, and raincoat.
Our guide was interesting. When he introduced himself to us, he
answered the question that he is asked countless times each day. He was 7’ 2”
tall, and yes, he played professional basketball at one time.
After the tour, which ended at the square where the (closed)
Christmas Market had been last year, we had about an hour of free time. Amy and
I decided to sample the local sausage at the
Bratwurstausle.
I only wanted a
taste, as we were planning for lunch on the boat in an hour and a half. I was
thinking of trying to get a few for take-out, but we ended up
going inside
and
sitting down. The smallest quantity was 6, so we got 6 to split between us. Amy
got a lemonade and I got some water (lemonade was the better choice). I had
ordered horseradish with it.
The horseradish wasn’t very hot at all. It was
slightly sweet, and Amy and I ended up preferring to eat that plain. The sausages
were very good, particularly with their mustard.
Amy
ate two of them, and I ate
the other four. I almost wished that we had gotten more.
We wandered around a bit more. Amy found a store where she got
some lebkuchen.
Amy found something akin to a farmer’s market, and they had a
bunch of vegetables that we didn’t recognize. I think the most confusing
one turned out to be celery root. We wandered back to the square and
met up with the
group for the bus ride back to the boat. Lunch was at 12:30, and then at 2, we
caught a shuttle bus back to the city. During lunch, the sky had brightened,
and the forecast called for only a 6% chance of rain, so I traded my
raincoat/vest for my red fleece jacket, and my Gore-Tex hiking boots for my
sneakers.
The bus took us to the opposite side of the old town than the
castle. We wanted to try to walk the wall, but we couldn’t find a way up. We
ran across a tourist information center, and I asked, and it turns out that we
couldn’t, except for a small section near the castle. So we just wandered
around looking at whatever we could find.
Because I had left most of my rain gear on the boat, of course
*now* we got a real rain shower. We first put on our rain hats, then visited a
Lindt chocolate shop, and when we came out, we brought out the umbrellas. It
wasn’t too bad, although it made taking pictures more difficult, at least until
I found a depression in the cobblestones that contained a significant puddle.
My sneaker was not impressed.
We found a Steiff store, which was really neat to browse. It is
where all of the high-class (expensive) bears hang out. There was one tempting
one, but since I already got a bear earlier, I passed this one up.
We had liked the macarons we had had on the Christmas Market
trip, and I saw a shop that had them, so we stopped in and got one each.
At this point, the rain had pretty much stopped, so we put our
umbrellas away and proceeded to
hike up to the castle/fortress
area where we
had started the day. We spent some time exploring that area, but then we were
running out of time and had to hurry back to where the bus was waiting. There
was some confusion on the time we were supposed to be back. Initially we were
told to be back at 5:15, but then I think that later he said 5:00. I figured
that we were supposed to be back by 5:00, with the bus leaving by 5:15. I think
we got back at something like 5:02. We thought we were just marginally late,
but the program director told us that we were actually about 10 minutes early.
I’m not sure where the 5:00 idea came from.
The ship left as soon as were back on board. I went up to the
lounge to type up the day’s events, and I noticed that we were approaching a
lock. I went to take a quick look, and I was aghast at the size of the thing.
It was the second of three ginormous locks just before the continental divide.
It was sort of like being in a slot canyon. It was normal width, but I think it
was about 75 feet high. This is like being next to an 8-story building.
At dinner, we sat with Theresa and Jo, and another couple. We had
a great time chatting. We eventually broke it up when we noticed that most of
the people had left the dining room, and they were beginning to remove the
table cloths from the neighboring table. I went up to the lounge to write up
the day’s events before I completely forget what we did.
Interestingly, I had two different people come up to me at two
different times while I was typing, asking me what I was doing, and wondering
if I was a professional writer or something. I had to explain to them that I
was just writing up the trip for my web page/travel blog, just for the fun of
it.
We are now pretty much on the continental divide, so the standing
joke now is “It’s all downhill from here”. Tomorrow in the early morning (i.e.
late night before dawn) we should leave the canal and enter the Danube. Then
we’ll be heading downstream rather than upstream until we get to Budapest.
Postscript: after writing the above, before I went down to the
cabin to go to bed, I decided to take a quick look off the bow to see what the
canal looked like ahead. When I got out there, I found that we were in one of
those
humongous locks,
except that this time we were going down. The water was
almost at the bottom, so I started another video. Because the lock is so tall,
the door is only at the bottom. The top portion is fixed. The door opens by
going up, sort of like a guillotine going backwards. Unfortunately, since the
door just came out of the water, it was dripping copiously, and I realized that
I couldn’t get under a roof without ruining the video, so I had to just stand
there and hope that I didn’t get too wet. (I got some big drips, but nothing
serious.) *Now*, it is time for bed.
