One full Saturday in Regensburg, then have to unboat at 5:30am Sunday morning.

 "I am an adult and can make my own decisions" Robert announced as he climbed back into bed after breakfast on Saturday morning.

Well, ok!

The Regensburg walking tour had already departed, we'd made the decision earlier to play hookey and instead visit a little museum full of Roman artifacts from back in the day.

Robert being an adult left Dumb Navigator #1 (me) Dumber Navigator #2 (Joy) and Head injured Navigator #3 (Ev) to try to find our way to the museum all aloney on our owney. 

Armed with two paper maps and my cell phone, we tried to exit only to find ourselves in the middle of some more viking tactical moves. It's one reason why the cruises seem so magical, the nuts and bolts maneuvers happen out of sight when **most** of the passengers are doing planned activities. 

Because team Semrad/Sewell cruise to the beat of 20" crash cymbals we were front and center for quite a few behind the scenes tasks and loved every minute of it.Vikings kept apologizing and we kept saying, "it's ok, it's ok, we love watching the magic happen".

Onward into Regensburg. My phone has trouble tracking me when I walk so I was squinting and memorizing the 8 syllable street names so I could match them up with the teensy screen font. At one point I heard Ev comment to Joy about what a pain it was that the map was printed upside down. Not gonna lie, my confidence waned.

We persevered. The museum was lovely, everything tagged exclusively in German, Once again my workhorse phone and google translate photo served to explain all the cool little artifacts we got to see.

It's astounding to think about what these folks were doing in Europe while we were rubbing two stones together to make a fire and painting with cactus leaves in our neck of the woods.

I loved these little broken off feet and was surprised to learn that the theory of toe shape being ascribed to ethnicity has been debunked! All these years I have loved believing that my Morton's toe (long assed pointer-finger toe) meant I was spawned from Egyptian royalty.

This tiny, perfectly shaped horse torso was thought to be part of someone's sword hilt.

There were lots of these milk vessels in the museum, unearthed near children's graves presumably intended to feed them in the afterlife.

This was not in the museum, but in a window we walked past twice. I would have gladly hiked back up the hill to buy it had Ms Annette Muke responded to my pleas via text, call and email. Finally, a sugar bowl with a knob big enough for Ev's hands.

And sadly, that's all the pics of Regensburg. Maybe I was distracted because we needed to pack or I was already mentally preparing for the long treck home but I felt like I'd lost the thread.

That evening, the vikings had prepared a celebration for us in the common room but Ev and I (like the party animals we are) chose to drink our Welcome to Your Suite! Day 1 bottle of champagne quietly watching the bow cam and then moving outside to sit on the porch and watch Regensburg shut down for the day.

Sunday: Bags out by 5:30am, board bus at 6am. Because Dammit! No one has ever missed a plane on Lovey's watch and we were not going to be the first.

So long Bavaria, it was good to know ya! 💗

On a final note, about halfway through the 11 hour flight Muc to Atl, I realized I was getting sick. Real sick. I took a Covid souvenier home from Germany and sadly ended our trip on a low note. Than goodness for Paxlovid. In 3 days I was feeling human again.

Passau-the perfect Bavarian town

 Passau only has about 50k residents and about 10k of those are students, so the town is full of youthful activity. It's just the perfect size and the way the ship was docked we could just cross a street and walk uphill and up steps following an alley to the center of town. Everyone in our group is feeling a little tour fatigue, no one wanted more words so we eschewed the viking walking tour and did our own thing. Slept in, then wandered around, ending up at St. Stephen's Cathedral for a free concert on their enormous organ with 17,974 pipes. 

Ev's hope was they would play something remotely familiar like Tocata en Fugue and not Hymn # 37 from the book. I basically heard Hymn 37-42 but Ev and Joy were into it. I tried to get a pic of Joybliss with her eyes closed and a smile on her lips but was thwarted.

 Ev, trying to catch Joy's attention so they could waggle their eyebrows at each other over what they were hearing.

The frontice piece at the altar. I never knew stoning looked like this. I thought stonings were done "death by a thousand cuts" style, with stones, not boulders.

What can I say about these Opa feet and these Opa shoes except how much I love them.

Just look at the perfection of this little town. I could spend some time here easily.

Back on the boat, the vikings were preparing a German fest for us. Ev had his mouth set for a hot dog so he split to dash back before the restaurant closed. When we made it, no Ev. Not in the room, not on the top deck, not in the lounge-nowhere.

Wellll, he boarded a boat, ordered and ate a hot dog and he asked his waiter to please tell Carlitos (our chef) it was one of his top 5 hot dog experiences. The waiter told him, "we don't have a chef Carlitos, you're on the wrong boat"😁

Our Balinese waiters, Lalu and Dwi in lederhosen. I just don't think they were made for hairy legged men. Dwi is the sweetest soul, and embodies everything we loved about Bali. He actually knew our divemaster from when we were there 15 years ago.

A special meal that started with the German variation on "platter".

Precious Lovey from Croatia, she has kept us informed, on time, hydrated and in line with absolute good spirits, high tolerance and an iron will. She is so impressive to watch in action.

At 24, she says confidently, "not one of you will miss your plane on my watch"

This is Sana, fueled by caffeine and nicotine and working circles around everyone else in the lounge. She is everywhere at once.

Since we didn't leave the boat with the rest of the passengers this morning, we got to see another boat mystery unfold. What happens to all the kitchen waste? It goes into these blue containers (that are clean as a whistle on the outside) and they are off loaded to be composted. The vikings dressed in blue are the brawn on the boat, they do all the heavy lifting to make the boat go. Everyone has a big job, but these guys have the especially physical jobs. They were swinging these containers up on the dock to be driven away.

Viking laundry is exceptional. Holy smokes, it comes back in 24 hours pressed and nicely folded. It was a perk for getting a room with an attached living area. What a treat!

I woke up in Krems.

 We sailed all night, at first light I pulled open the curtain and snapped this through my window while still in bed. I thought it was a castle but later learned it is the Gottweig Abbey we were scheduled to tour.

The abbey was about a 10 minute bus ride from the boat. I learned we're on what is called a lollipop (sucker) tour for the reason below. 

Viking has provided us with really good audio boxes, the guides can walk along slowly, speaking in a normal voice, and we shuffle along behind, alternately watching our feet and whatever she is describing.

The abbey is a Unesco World Heritage site, and was delightful. They have acres of fruit and grape orchards surrounding the buildings and produce jams and wines that are for sale for the cause. They are specifically known for their apricots. In our half day there, we had a short class learning to make apricot dumplings, toured the grounds, had a wine tasting and some of us wandered into places we had not bee invited to....

View from the abbey into the valley.

Violence at the water fountain:

Many words were spoken about the frescoes, we guessed it took the artist around 5 years to paint them, in truth it took the artist 90 days in the early 1700's. I am certain these have religious and historical significance, but I find his subject matter kinda quirky. An angel practicing modern dentistry, for example.

Are these two smirking, holding The Nails?

No idea what these two little monsters are up to, but I know it's nothing good.

Angels gone bad, bad to the bone.

As soon as we got back to the boat, we were invited in for lunch and cast off for Passau through the Wachau Valley. It's so relaxing to sail on these boats, the countryside just streams past you at a nice slow pace, there are no sudden accelerations or stops. You can wander around the top deck or sit on the bow and drink tea or whatever. Our activities director, Lovey, narrated what we were seeing.

There were ALOT of words today. I only half listened and opted just to soak up the beauty instead. This gist of what I heard: Richard the Lionhearded. Limestone. Medievel stacked stone structures. Multimillion euros. Imprisoned for trying to pay for a meal. Sold the Gutenberg bible to the USA to pay for church repairs. That's about all I can remember.

Here some the pics from the UNESCO canyon.

We went through several locks today, each one takes about 20 minutes. Our boat captain absolutley slayed this one. There was a handspan of space on each side of the boat. When we entered, it was deep and dark. Incredible technology.

Hard to go to bed last night with the excitement of the day. One last picture of locks at night. We were on the upper deck enjoying the quiet and dark when peace was rudely disrtupted by an inibriated passenger coming up the stairs yelling "wheres the neon?" Our first brush with incivility on the boat.