Wednesday, Oct 31st.  Finally, a port the ship ties up to and stays in place!  We did two tours.  The first was mostly through the inside of the local palace, which thoroughly lives up to the name palace.  A lot of the building was destroyed by one bombing raid very shortly before the end of the war.  But the town rebuilt it!  Absolutely breathtaking rooms.  Marvelous artwork and workmanship.  Sadly, no photos allowed.  We finished the tour with a walk through town.  A fun little market, more churches, lots of activity.  This is a university town, with about 30,000 students.  It doesn’t feel old.

After lunch nine hearty souls did the second tour, billed as a “Walk Among the Vines”.  Actually, it’s a drive to a hillside chruch, walk down to the river, then a climb through vineyards up to the local fort.  And then back down.  About 4 miles.  We maintained a very slow lecturing pace so it wasn’t hard.  Extremely informative, somewhat exhilarating.  An excellent time.

Back on board, the ship had some Halloween feel to it, with many crewmen wearing face paint.  Pumpkins.  The bad news was that the Captain announced that we’ll do a ship swap from Nuremberg to Passau on Friday. But it looks hopeful that we’ll get all the way to Budapest from there. Passengers seem resigned to it, happily. No ugly scenes when the announcement was made. The crew has been all one can ask of Viking and we’ll be sorry to leave them. It’s been a great time to date though obviously more busing than expected or hoped for.

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