There were many locks in the night enroute to Bamburg. Didn't hear one. We arrived during breakfast. We will be here long enough to discharge those of us going on the various tours. It will then move on and we will meet it farther up the canal. Speaking of the canal: it was completed in the 1990s and is not very close to the cities it serves. It is mostly in industrial areas and not scenic. Not missing much by travelling at night. The Danube was beautiful and the Rhine will be. The canal between the two, not so much. There are some ordinary, non-historic neighborhoods but not many.
We had a very short bus ride to an area outside the city center. Then we walked. Uphill. No rain, anyway, but the cobblestones are still rough. Much is still original from the past. There was mostly no WW2 bombing because there was no industry in the area. Only about 4% was damaged. There were fires, however, so some buildings are only 900 years old. Bamburg is a young city. Artifacts do not go much beyond 1060. So 4 to 6 hundred years younger than some other places we've been to.
It was a fairly steep walk up to the cathedral, the bishops residence and the old town hall. We were told of the history but could not go in the cathedral as a group. We could go in as individuals but not as a group. But we would not walk all the way back up the steep hill when we were on our own after the tour. We shopped instead. And drank beer, etc. We did go in one beautiful church just off the central market area.
We had about a 10-15 minute walk to get to where the busses could park (not allowed in the central area) and we were tired. The walk distance today wasn't the issue, it was the hills. Steeper than other towns we have visited. Luckily the rain started after we boarded the bus. It was about a 30 minute mostly highway drive to where the ship would meet us, an almost 4 hour passage for it. We got to the very industrial, ugly canal spur to meet the ship and... no ship. About a hundred and eighty people ready to reboard and nothing to reboard. A lot of women were desperate for the heads but...
The ship arrived more than 30 minutes late due to a lock delay at the last one before our location. Oh, well. Boating is boating, no matter the size of the vessel. After a stop in our cabin we went to lunch. I had started feeling a bit poorly. Coming down with something. A woman sat next to me at breakfast 3 or 4 days ago who may have had something to share. Sigh. I'm not too bad. An annoyance. We had a group movie trivia session that was fun and a cooking lesson that was not. Dinner was with new-to-us people which was fun. I didn't have much of an appetite but the meal was fun anyway. Some of the folks have been nice. Some interesting. And some great! Some we really clicked with and have spent a lot of time with doing different things. A very small, trivial minority have not been uh, compatible. We'll know to avoid dinner or lunches with them. Money doesn't buy class. Only a very, very few have been unapproachable. Stiff, steel 4-foot rods up their butts. Oh well. Of about a 180 or so passengers aboard I would guess the people we would not want to be around is less than a dozen. Maybe a lot less. Fellow passengers (and crew) have been fantastic!
On to Wurzburg.
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