.
12/13/2014 Saturday
Passau
Arrive 8:00am · Depart 1:00pm
Linz, Austria (Österreich) - Arrive 8:30pm
Take in the baroque splendor of Passau, favorably located at the confluence of the Inn, Ilz, and Danube Rivers. You'll admire the Old Town's beguiling combination of Italian-baroque and medieval architecture on your walking tour. Cultural Connection: Learn the secrets of making one of the region's most famous sweets — gingerbread — at a demonstration inside a local bakery. Afterward, you'll have time to visit Passau's Christmas Market located just outside St. Stephan's Cathedral. Back on board, decorate the ship's Christmas tree with your fellow travelers.
Passau Tourism Link Another one
20141213 Passau to Linz ..Link To Photos..
Up, breakfast, then we sat around for a while until the walking tours departed. Then we departed and took a shortcut to a place the group would be – the Simon gingerbread demonstration.
The Simon family (grandson of the founder, about 70, and his son, now the owner) gave a talk on gingerbread. The oldest recipe used honey as the sweetener. A more modern version used molasses. The most recent uses sugar. Each of these has to be done in a different manner to have the product come out correctly. We sampled each, with our Gluhwein; I liked the original best.
Then into their gift shop, where we bought some gingerbread and some cookies. After that, we went to the Christmas Markt in front of the cathedral. We took a Gluhwein break there but didn't buy anything. Dolores & Lou got into a paper shop and bought supplies for the group-vs-group Christmas tree decorating competition this afternoon.
Back then to the ship and to a light lunch in the “Captain's Club” on the stern, where you can get a lighter meal than the large ones in the restaurant/dining room.
As we were eating, the ship got underway for Linz. We watched the buildings on the shore go past as the ladies started the competition. We reached a lock after a bit; after passing through the lock, a crewman raised the Austrian flag at the bow in honor of that country.
The afternoon journey down the Danube was wonderful. To own a house here would really be peaceful.
The ladies went nuts making the tree look good. Lou had purchased some small green globes and they made chains of paper materials. They cut out other paper for ornaments. The engineers went to work making a star. A five-sided star would be 360/5=72* between points. Not having a protractor, several methods were attempted but none looked right. Finally, a star off the house tree was “borrowed” to act as a template for the star we made. Tomorrow, we'll work on mounting it.
The hero survivors took off with their tree to a cabin. When they brought it back, it had lots of ornaments of pictures of the firefighters that died in the fire they were fighting in Arizona. The 9/11 survivors aboard also had something to do with the tree. They'll probably win on sentiment.
Dolores said that Mrs Henry Lewis, wife of the Vantage owner, is aboard and chatted with them for a while.
..Link To Photos.. ..Link To Photos..
The Captain hosted our cocktail hour and then the dinner. Both were great, but the best was that Roxanne and Melissa invited us to join them. We ate and we goofed off with our crazy waiter and we just had fun. The guys were inbetween our ladies on the outside and the young ladies on the wall. The dinner was a five course thing with all the good dishes the chef put out. But it was better with the gals from Arizona.
Then I decided to take a walk into town to find things that I thought I had located on maps. I walked up through the Hauptplatz and on up the tram tracks to Bismarkstrasse, where I turned left. And there it was – the shop “Schirmherr”. I hope to see it again tomorrow.
Then back to the ship. I found Lou, Glenn, and Dolores with Melissa and Roxanne, swapping stories. I joined and we drank a little more, but then we all got tired so we adjourned and headed for bed.
