2016/05 Europe cruise - Nuremburg |
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Saturday May 14th
We were now halfway into our cruise and close to the highest point on the trip. It was sunny but cool and breezy. The forecast was for colder and wetter.
We began our day in Nuremburg with a bus trip around the Nazi sights. This started at the Congress Hall, built to resemble but also outsize the Coliseum in Rome. It was intended to be roofed. The walls are about 130 feet high and were intended to go to nearly twice that but they were never finished either.
We just drove around the interior without getting out. There were alternative excursions to visit the WW2 historic sites, but we weren’t interested. Nearby is Zeppelin Field, location of the Nazi party’s Nuremburg rallies. Like most of the rallying grounds the field looked grubby and unkempt, and it should probably be left that way.
We continued our bus trip around Nuremburg’s city walls, passing the courtroom where the Nuremburg trials were held in 1945. We 
were dropped off at the castle and we climbed the sandstone hill and went through the tunnel to the courtyard. The castle’s impressive with lots of buildings within its walls but our tour didn’t include any of the interiors, and we were soon headed down the hill to the market square and the Church of our Lady.
The church is famous for its clock and mechanical display. At noon a bell rings, a drum beats, and the figures of the Electors rotate around the seated Emperor. It still works after five hundred years. 
We noticed that some of the older houses had these elaborate bay windows. When the houses were built there were laws limiting the amount of decoration on the houses’ exteriors. However, bay windows were permitted so that’s how home owners expressed their individuality.
This was the Saturday of a long weekend (Whitsun or Pentecost) and the market and surrounding streets were very crowded. We spotted a quiet trail along the Pegnitz, the river that winds through the old town. It was a nice escape from the crowds, with its pretty bridges and weirs.
We went back to the boat for lunch and to add some warmer clothes. We were shuttled back in for the afternoon. We continued down the river to some gardens but they weren’t much so we walked in the other direction and found a park and recreation area on Island Schutte. By then the weather was going downhill so we went back early to the shuttle bus. The Ingvi took off too as soon as we were back.
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Nuremburg |
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Later that evening we went into an 80 foot deep lock, like being in the bottom of a well. The picture was taken from the Aquavit 
Terrace, a small open area off the lounge. The sun deck was still closed.
And then we were passing over an aqueduct, looking down on houses and the road. Somewhere in the night we passed the highest point of our cruise and began our way down the canal towards the River Danube and Vienna and Budapest.
Our next letter, part 3 of this story, will cover our trip down the Danube.