Passau

I woke up before 6 on Thursday morning and peeked out our window to see some blue sky and the sun just coming up. After attempting to get dressed quietly (I still woke Marilyn up), I grabbed my camera and went up on deck. It was one of those mornings when there was a mist on the water and the sun was intermittently breaking through the clouds. 

After taking these first few photos, I thought it might be a good idea to explore Passau on my own. Luckily, we were docked right in the city, not far from the old town. I really enjoy early morning photography  because I have wherever I am to myself. Today I only saw a few joggers and bike riders while I explored. As you can tell from most of my photos, I prefer not to have people in them so I was quite pleased with the situation.

Passau is located where the Danube, Ilz and Inn rivers converge so you can always find water. I explored a pathway that ran along the river and found that the ducks were still sleeping! You might remember that last year, there was extensive flooding in Europe. Passau was hit particularly hard. Much of the old city was under water and a year later, they are still doing major repairs. You can see the high water mark on this tower.

Passau is another city that was not damaged much during the war so its old buildings and narrow streets are still around. Since I wasn't with a tour, I was able to take my time and find some of the smaller, almost hidden, streets. 

This is another shot that shows the extent of the water damage that they are trying to fix.

Something we noticed in Passau that we didn't see in some of the other small towns was grafitti. A lot was politically oriented but some was just humourous.

I wandered into a square that was also pretty much deserted and tried out the panorama feature on the Iphone again.

The big attraction in Passau was St. Stephen's Cathedral. I know I keep saying how amazing the cathedrals are, but this one outdid the others. We also had the pleasure of listening to an incredible organ concert while we were there. The pipe organ is one of the largest in the world and it has over 1800 pipes. I took quite a few pictures in the cathedral including an attempted vertical panorama. It captures the scope of the place but is a little out of line because I had to move the camera behind my head at one point.

After lunch, we left Passau as the sky started to darken.

Our next destination was a small town called Engelhartszell. It was special for a couple of reasons. One was that we were the first tour group to ever tour the town. They had just organized with Uniworld for tours to start. The local guide was a bit nervous as it was her first tour and the people in the town were curious about the herd of tourists. The main reason for visiting was the local abbey. The monks produced both beer and cheese that we were to sample. The tour was excellent and we learned a lot about the history of the abbey. The tasting took place in a local restaurant. The beer was quite powerful at 6.8% and 9.7% alcohol. The monks knew what they were doing!

After our sampling, Marilyn and I headed off to walk around the town. It was a very quiet and peaceful place. We only met a couple of people and had the place to ourselves. The town had the colourful homes that we've seen in other places but there were also many really interesting doors. 

Dinner:

Chef's Cobb Salad

Caprese Salad

Crayfish Bisque Danube

Seared Redfish Filet

Slow Roasted Turkey Breast