Last night the ship was held up for quite a while at a lock that malfunctioned (lock wouldn’t open). As soon as we arrived in Wurzburg (at about our scheduled time) we left the ship on buses that took us to the Wurzburg Residence. The ship continued on through the Wurzburg lock and docked in our scheduled location. The captain did a good job of getting us through the program on schedule.
The Wurzburg Residence was very impressive, but they didn’t allow pictures inside. There were a few rooms that survived World War 2. The rooms that did survive were quite impressive – and the ones that didn’t were rebuilt. The gardens outside were also nice. The tour guide was very informative and he took us to the center of town and gave us directions to walk to the ship.
I went inside the large church first since it was where we stopped, then over to the market square and finally the old bridge before walking back to the ship for lunch.
After lunch we took a short bus trip (about an hour) to Rothenberg. This is a large, active medieval city with city walls and towers. We walked through part of town to a nice viewpoint outside the city walls. The tour guide gave us some recommendations for activities in our free time. Obviously there was a German Christmas store in town. I went into the church with the blood altar and noticed that there was a seashell on the normal altar. Outside I found a statue and seashells on the ground pointing the direction for Camino de Santiago. The town has a lot of beautiful half timbered buildings. I would highly recommend visiting Rothenberg.
After our visit we returned to the ship by bus. The story of the day was my friend was almost left behind while drinking a beer next to the ship. They were raising the bridge between the ship and the dock and my friend heard they were only missing 1 person…. finally he caught on that he was that one person! You can’t make this stuff up…
For dinner I had the braised beef.
