Journey Along Romantic Danube River - Not Quite The End of Journey, Germany

It was almost the end of our cruise but, we still had two places to visit before we had to leave this ship.  This morning, we arrived in Germany and a city of Passau.  I honestly haven't heard of this city before.  

Passau situates in the lower Bavaria of Germany.  It's also called Dreiflüssestadt (oh so many letters) or the city with three rivers.  This is actually where Danube river meets Inn river and Ilz river.  No wonder that we kept seeing river no matter which direction the guide took us.

Ref: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/europe/germany/passau/

Looking at the map, the town didn't seem to be too complicate to explore.  However, the way the guide took us around, turned left and right, up and down and took different small streets after another, that totally confused me.  My sense of direction basically couldn't cope with it that day.  

I'll make it simple.  If I remember correctly, our ship docked on Fritz-Schaffer Promenade.  We left the ship around 9AM, and first headed to Rathaus Platz, though not directly.  We crossed the street and slipped into Hollgasse.  There, our guide pointed out a unique butcher shop.  What so different about it?  It only sell horse meat and the sign in front of the shop confirmed it.  We passed Hotel Wilder Mann before got out at Rathaus Platz.  It was not only pretty but, it also housed Glass Museum which was supposed to be quite an attraction with glass objects from as far back as 1650.

Rathaus Platz was where the town hall (Altes Rathaus) was located with its painted facade.  The paintings depicted the story of the town.

The town hall also included a clock tower or Glockenspiel.  On the tower, we could see code-of-arm and even flood gage.  The guide showed us the level of flood on different years.  Scarily, back in 1500, the flood has come up as high as the town hall door which was could be as tall as 2.5-3 meters.

Across from the town hall and across the Danube, we could see Veste Oberhaus, a 12th century medieval fortress which was commenced by Passau's Prince-Bishops.  It was located on the mountain of St.Georgsberg.  The building was kind of simple looking but in fact it was a combination of gothic, renaissance and baroque art.  However, as it was high up,  looking over the town, it was a bit dominated the scene.

We continued on the winding streets.  We went to see a church of St. Michael and I mean 'see' only.  The entrance to the church was actually barred.  So we could have a peek but no more than that.

Then another up and down and we emerged on the other side of the town and on the Inn river bank, on Innkai.  Both sides of the rive lined with different colors houses.

We had a short period to enjoy the river then, the guide took us back into a maze of buildings and to Residenzplatz.  It was a straight forward name because the bishop resided here in the New Bishop Residence (Neue Residenz) hence, the name, Residence Square.  The Bishop's place was a big white building on one side.  Now, it was an administrative building of some kind as well as Museum of the Treasure of the Cathedral.  It kind of stood out from other pastel building surrounding the square.

In the center of Residenzplatz was a fountain with their patron saint, Mary.  It didn't look like much as it was dwarfed by the all the buildings.

We walked passed the bishop residence and headed to St. Stephan's Cathedral (how many St. Stephan's that we saw on this trip??).  We were squeezed into small alley on the side of the cathedral.  From very high wall and tall tower, we could anticipate the cathedral to be pretty big.  Also it was so white, almost to bright to look at it (wondering if they have just painted it).

This cathedral was the seat of Bishop of Passau.  There have been many churches before this one but, the latest one was destroyed by fire.  Therefore, the town built this Baroque cathedral to replace it back in 16th century.  Other than its magnificent colorful fresco, another thing to notice was its huge organ.  It apparently is the largest organ in cathedral in the world...that's something.

It took quite a bit of time to see everything.  Our guide also pointed out some interesting point about the fresco.  There were some 3D fresco! I mean some parts of the fresco popped out from the wall, like the end of the cloth or a hands that seemed to reach out from the picture.  However, because the ceilings were so high, it would be difficult to see from pictures.

After that, we exited the cathedral from its side door to a small court yard.  In the center, there was a statue, as usual. 

I didn't catch what the statue was for but, maybe it was for commemoration of saints or bishops.  On the opposite side from where we got out from cathedral, was another building which could be the office of the priest.  And on its wall was a sun clock.  It looked very simple with a few lines to indicate the time of day.  However, if I remember correctly, the time was a bit off.

We ended our tour in a square in front of the cathedral or Domplatz around 10:15AM.  From there, our guide told us the way to reach town center as well as the way to go back to our ship.  The direction that we got, took us to the main street which lined with shops and restaurants.  We mostly did window shopping.  Naturally, we were thinking of having lunch but, afraid that we wouldn't have enough time.

As walking along, we found a chocolate shop which was so appealing.  The shop was decorated with Easter theme, so pretty.  Actually, I'm not much of a sweet tooth person but, it did look really good that we had to step inside.  I think there were over 20 types of chocolate with different fillings and coats.  A tasting was a must in this case but, we didn't want to eat a lot.  So, we asked if we could buy only one piece for each of us.  It was a little too sweet for me but, the chocolate did taste great.

Our ship left Passau around noon for Vilshofen which would be our last stop.  Times really flied but, didn't think it would be this quick.  We reached Vilshofen around 3PM.  For such a small town, we didn't have any tour there (couldn't understand why they selected this town to be our last stopped).  However, the town did prepare a festivity for us and for us only.  They called it Oktoberfest but, we all knew that April was too early for Oktoberfest.  Anyway, it was kind enough for the town's people to turn up just for us.  Tables were set up just on the dock with, of course, beer and traditional music as well as dance.  True to their German nature, even between songs and dances, the musicians had to have beer...

The ship gave us two tickets for beer or soft drink for anyone who didn't like beer.  If we would like to have more, we had to pay for it.  Since we were in Germany, it would be strange to take otherwise, even though I didn't like beer much myself. 

One glass was enough for me.  After drinking beer, watching show under the sun for some times, we decided to take a peek into town.  Actually, that was because we saw some of our shipmates who just came back from town, with ice cream.  That was more appealing for us than beer.  

From the dock, we went under a street to enter the town.  The first street was more like a residential area, I think, with not much to see.  

The second street was probably part of the downtown with shops.  Again, common for this area, the buildings alongside the street were painted in pastel colors, cute as always.  From where we emerged, at the end of the street on the left was a church, Stadtpfarrkirche Johannes Baptise to be exact and on the other side was Stadtplatz with a clock tower.  As it didn't seem to be much going on, we decided just to cover this street.  Most of the shops are closed that day probably because it was already 5PM and on weekend.  By the way, we did manage to grab some shakes and ice cream.  There was one shop very close to the clock tower.

We went back to our ship around 5:30PM to freshen up and get ready.  As that was our last night with Ama cruise, a farewell dinner has been prepared for us.  It started with a cocktail party with a thank to all staffs.  It was kind of similar to our welcome party.  At 7:30PM, we moved down to the dining room for farewell dinner.  This was the only formal dinner that we had from the whole trip even though, it still wasn't as formal as in ocean cruise.  I think it was quite nice, for me at least cuz I brought quite a few dresses but, didn't get to wear them.  So, I wouldn't feel like I wasted my time and energy to pack them.  We didn't linger in the dining room because we still had to pack.  We would be disembarking in the morning.  For the crew to execute the disembark process smoothly, we needed to leave our luggages outside our room in the morning, I mean early like 7AM so, we had to finish it tonight.
When morning came, I was ready with only a few toiletry to pack up.  It was the end of our cruise but, not yet the end of our trip.  Basically, all passengers were going on three different destinations; to Munich airport, to Munich city and to Prague.  We were the latest, Prague.  However, we were not going there directly.  Our cruise provided one more tour to Regensburg, Germany.  We said goodbye to our floating 3 stars hotel at 8:30Am.  We reached Regensburg around 10:30AM, I just slept almost all the way there.  This was my second time here.  For some unintentional reason, I got chances to visit many cities twice, I don't mind though.

Ref: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/europe/germany/regensburg/

Regensburg was a medieval city and it even was dated back as early as 179AD, pretty impressive.  Moreover, it was pronounced a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006.  The first time I was there, my friend and I took a train out from Munich then, we explored on our own from the train station to the stone bridge.  We didn't have much time so, we just looked around...oh maybe an afternoon tea then, went back to Munich.  This time, when the bus came to a stop, I didn't recognized any of the surrounding.  That was because we were on a different side of the river.  We got off on Am Protzenweiher and from there, we took Stadtamhof to head to town.  On both side of the street we could see very uniform pastel building, a colorful avenue.  

This street leaded to the stone bridge (the one I didn't cross last time).  This bridge was one of the main attraction of this town because it was so pretty.  It gave sort of feeling like crossing Charles bridge in Prague, just much smaller and no statue.  

The view on both side of the bridge was awesome.  We had very green riverbank on one side and super pretty candy color buildings on the other.  I just couldn't stop taking pictures of the town, actually realized later on that I got many pictures of the same scene.

It was hard to pay attention to the guide.  Look at the view, super cute wasn't it?  At the end of the bridge was a clock tower and the entrance to the town.  That was the old clock tower and it was a part of the Salt House.  Not only it was in a pretty color, when we walked under it, we could see a stand out window in red and white.

Our first major attraction was painted building in Altstadt area.  It was a painting of David & Goliath.  The painting was as tall as the third floor.  Goliath was actually leaning on the second floor window, how convenient.  

To add on the awesome sight of the giant man, there was a elderly man playing violin just in front of the building.  The old guy really did a great job, listening to the history, soaking in the sight and being serenaded with classical violin...what else could we asked for.  We were thinking of buying his CD but, I don't that we would feel the same when we listened to it back home...or maybe we had to listen and look at the Regensburg pictures at the same time to get the same feel.

Then, the guide showed us different areas, different corners and different interesting buildings.  Many of the buildings that was shown to us was actually an old buildings turn dormitories.  It should be very cool to live in such history rich buildings.  The downside of this arrangement would be extra exercise...cuz, these buildings didn't have elevator...imagine carrying luggages up a 4-5 stories tower.

After that, we headed to the center stage, St.Peter's Cathedral (Regensburger Dom).  We emerged from a small alley right across from the cathedral.  It was big, it was tall with it looked like it was reaching for the sky or maybe heaven.  That was just what I felt.

This Gothic cathedral was built back in 13th century but it said in the guide book that the tall spires was added in 19th century by King Ludwig I....good taste.  Well, it did give us a big heads up.

There was a mass at the time we were there.  I knew that it was in German but, that didn't matter.  It just made our visit even better.  We waited until the the service finished to get a change to look around.  After that, we met up with the rest of the group and the guide pointed out our way back to our bus.  We still got about an hour there.  It was almost noon and we still got a long ride ahead of us.  So, we asked the guide for some places for lunch and the suggestion was Wurstkuchl (http://www.wurstkuchl.de/home.html).  It was a very old restaurant, served traditional cuisine.  Sausages would be nice.  The restaurant was on the bank of the river and actually was right next to the stone bridge.  Basically, it was on the other side of the Salt House.  Even before we saw the restaurant, we could smell it.  That's always a good sign.  The restaurant had two sections; the outdoor which was the old part and the indoor which was new.  We wanted to sit outside to get the feel but unfortunately, it was full.  

Well, indoor we went.  Actually, inside wasn't so bad.  The decor was very German, the tone, table cloth and furnitures.  

Then, we gotto quickly order because we hadn't got much time.  They got quite a variety of selection in the menu, not just sausage.  However, I only had my eyes on sausages.  Their signature seemed to be this Schweinsbratworstl and we can choose how many we wanted, 6, 8 or 10.  

We decided to share along with salad and a chicken dish.  They all tasted very nice.  We got a mix salad with everything from greens, endives, carrot, orange, boiled egg and sausage with vinaigrette dressing.

Then, our main course came.  The sausage was served on a mound of sauerkraut and with sweet mustard.  The sausage was cooked on charcoal so, it wasn't tasty only from the well seasoned meat but also, the aroma from charcoal.  The only thing that we wished was for differ, was the size of sausages.  They were so thin but then, it might not be this good.

Lastly, the waitress brought the chicken.  The chicken was grilled and served with a kind of creamy sauce with vegetable.  It was very tasty.  The chicken was well cooked and wasn't dried even though it was breast meat.  

Overall, it was a very satisfied meal.  We didn't have time for dessert but, we did eye a cake shop very close to our pick up spot so, decided to stop there for some sweets take away.  The shop was called Kuchenbar (http://sweetdreams-kuchen.de/)and it was at the corner of Am Protzenweiher and just a peek from the outside was enough to lure us in.

We bought quite a few small bite pastries to eat on the bus.  Not only they looked so appetizing, they were all very good.  After finished our desserts, each of us slipped into siesta mode.  It would take us several hours more before we research our next  and last destination, Prague.


... To be continue