Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Clay woke me before 6am today. The alarm didn’t go off. I
guess he was just awake. We had breakfast at 7am. Clay wanted an omelet this
morning and ordered it before even sitting down. The waiter came back from the kitchen
to tell him they couldn’t fix omelets this morning. They could fry eggs to
order and they could make porridge today, but not omelets because of a problem
with the fire. Go figure! Clay had already made his toast and was all ready for
that omelet. Oh well.
Regarding low water. It has rained hard all day and we are
sailing again. We left Vilshofen right after dinner. We hope to be in
Regensburg by morning and Riedenburg by afternoon. We are basically a day
behind in the sailing schedule right now. This will mean some more long bus
rides until we catch up. They are hopeful that we can make the
Rhine-Main-Danube canal. I think we are about 40-50 km away right now. Anyway,
getting everyone disembarking or otherwise to Nuremberg tomorrow will mean some
more long bus rides. But that is better than packing up and leaving the boat.
Fingers crossed.
So we had a long day riding the bus again today and it was
soggy as well. We were happy for the rain if it means we keep sailing. We got
to Regensburg later than scheduled and it was a bit of a disappointment all
around after the long bus ride and wet walk. What I most remembered there was the
stone bridge and it was covered in scaffolding as they repaired it. Half was
repaired and from the bridge you couldn’t even tell it was old. We walked through
the new part of town to get to the bridge and we hadn’t been there before. It
was built in the 17th and 18th centuries vs. the 1000’s!
The cathedral has a new organ “hanging” in it since we last visited. We got to have
the famous Regensburg sausages at Wurstkuchl for lunch and not much else but
Clay was happy. After lunch we drove to Kelheim. We saw the remains of the
first attempt at a canal to bypass the Danube Gorge. We drove up to the
Liberation Monument and had too much time to kill there after the rush of the morning.
It was covered in scaffolding and the views were cloudy and seen through rain.
Then we drove back down to Kelheim to board a sightseeing boat through the Danube
Gorge ending at Weltenburg Abbey. There we had a complimentary beer and
pretzel. We got to tour the brewery the last time here and that would have been
a better use of time that the closed Liberation Monument too. It is over 1000
years old! At 5pm we had our abbey church tour. I love this church. They have
the most life-like statues including St. George slaying the dragon on the altar.
We had a long walk out of the abbey into Weltenburg to meet the bus. It took us
nearly 2 hours to get back to the boat. That brings us up to date here. Simona
held a mandatory briefing about tomorrow but came by our table at dinner to let
us know we didn’t have to attend. Whew! She told us our options for tomorrow and
even though it will be a long day with long bus rides, we all agreed to go do
the 2 Nuremburg tours tomorrow on the between cruises turnaround day. The other
thing was that the dining room manager came by and told us that starting
tomorrow after disembarkation that the boat would end assigned tables and go to
open seating. He offered to let us keep our table reserved instead if we preferred.
We all discussed the pros and cons and agreed that we would all prefer to
continue to keep our table and dining partners for the next week. They assured
us that they would mark it as reserved for us. So, we’re going to becoming
those clubby long-term cruisers that all the new arrivals hate. I can’t imagine
doing these one or two week intensive cruises as a vacation for a working
person. It is strenuous with no rest. You’d need an actual vacation vs. a trip
to rest up when you got back home. Fingers crossed that we keep sailing all
night. It looks and sounds precarious out there tonight!
