Wurzburg and Kitzingen - Updated (May be out of order. We were here Saturday and Bamberg Sunday)

We got up, dressed and headed to breakfast.   We sat at a round table for six.  Warren and Jan, from Vancouver, joined us.  Stephen and Nancy also joined us.  Warren is interested in genealogy. His line takes him back to Salem, MA where one of his great, great, great grandfather's wife was hanged for witchcraft.  She is not related to him.  A second marriage or maybe third.  Interesting.

We decided not to do the morning tour.  It is spitting and cold.  We might walk into town later.  The tours left the ship and we took off sailing.  We sailed most of the morning.  I headed up to the lounge to enjoy the views and have a cup of tea.  Did some cross stitch while Bob worked on his pictures.

As we came through one of the lock, this was on the other side.  There are many villages like this all along the river.

We docked in Wurzburg at around 11 am.  A little history of this city.  It is located in northwestern Bavaria.  It has about 130,000 residents but is a popular tourist destination.  It is a university city and developed the first x-ray machine here in 1895.  It is the center of the Franconian Wine region.

When we docked, we were next to the Scenic Ruby.  So we will have to cross that ship to get to shore. They are doing the same itinerary as we are so we see them quite often.

Lunch is early today.  We go out for the afternoon tour at 1pm.  This is an optional tour to Rothenburg. It is a picturesque medieval village.  It is located 270 feet above the River Tauber.  It was a prosperous city in medieval times, but its fortunes plummeted after it was cut off from the new trading routes.  It became a provincial market town without money to expand or erect new buildings.  It remained unchanged until the 19th century when Conservationists stepped in and introduced the strictest conservation orders in Germany.  So now they are really a tourist destination.

After lunch we took a bus to Rothenburg.  What a wonderful village.  We did a walking tour of the village and then had lots of free time to explore on our own.  We visited two churches that were wonderful.

The town of Rothenberg is surrounded by the city wall.  You can walk part of the wall be we did not do this due to the time limit we had for our visit.  The original wall was destroyed by an earthquake but was rebuilt.

This is the outside of a wine store.  Our guide, Victoria, is telling us about the bottles.  Only wine from this region uses bottles shaped like this.

There are several towers in the town.

Town Hall by the center square.  You can walk up the stairs to the tower but not today.

The towers of St. Jakobs Church.

This is the passage way behind the town hall.

Several building we have seen use this technique to keep the birds off the ledges.  It appears that this bird has found a way to beat the system.

Shops and hotels in the town use this kind of fancy sign.

This is one of the gates to the town.  The wooden gate is dated from 1555.

Outside the walls of the city you see beautiful gardens.

Look back to the walled city.  Can you see the mask?  Most had only one hole but this one had three.

A view from the outside of the city over the area.

This is a double bridge.  The lower bridge was built and instead of replacing it with a higher bridge, they built another bridge right on top.

This is the inside of St. John's Church.

We next went to St. Jakob's Church.  This is on the outside of that church.

This is a beautiful church.

The pulpit.

The rear of the church.

This is made of wood.  They are usually painted.

Close up of the altar.

We also did some shopping.  Had our purchases sent to the house.  Figure they will arrive in a couple of weeks.  Then we stopped at a cafe for beer and pretzel.  Plus we decided to share a "snowball".  This is pastry that is shaped like a ball and then coated in chocolate.  Not real sweet but good.

The cafe where we had our snack.

The bus ride back to the ship took over one hour.  The ship was moving from where we got off to Kitzingen.  The drive time is about one hour but the ship time is over 6 hours.  This is because the Main meanders and the ship has to go through many locks.  So it takes a long time.  By the time we got to the dock, the ship was not there yet.  But it arrived in a few minutes.

We reboarded the ship and it was time for dinner.  We sat with Joe and Emily from California.  We had a great dinner conversation wise.  I did not like what was on the menu so I had the salad and a steak from the anytime menu.  And fruit for dessert.

Back to the cabin for reading.  Tonight they are having a wine tasting at a local place.  After dinner and wine, I do not need more wine so we skipped the tasting.