Cruise Report - Bamberg

This is the last day of cruise activities.  As always I started with the wellness classes, and the Wellness Director said he was going to change the exercises since I was the only one in the first class.  Why?  He'd seen me walking oddly the day before.  I had to figure out how to explain that I had been wearing knee braces because of the walking (and because one knee had given out when I was going uphill the day before) and I was really fine to do what he had planned.  This involved some English-to-Spanish-and-Portuguese translation, and a bit of pantomime.

To our surprise, two people joined us for the second class!  They are a couple and the husband said they had been thinking about doing the classes, and finally got up early enough for one.  The Wellness Director had reassured me that more people were in the afternoon classes; I avoided them because I'd already done an hour of exercise, and often a lot of walking tour.

We listened to the mandatory disembarkation talk for the next day.  There was a special brunch called Frühschoppen but I had an important meeting - and when it was over less than an hour later, the brunch had disappeared!  Yes, I had breakfast, but I love sausages and saw signs for several.  Luckily for me, one of the lunch options was a local sausage, and I was able to eat one and it was very good.  I ate in the Lounge and watched as the scenery rolled past.

We had afternoon tours in the town of Bamberg, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  All the tours included a coupon to get some smoked beer, which I didn't want - a small sip, yes, but not an entire stein!  You could turn them in for a bottle to take aboard, but I didn't get around to the shop that allowed it; if I were confident I could take it home, maybe, but fellow cruisers said the bottles were not tightly sealed.

The dock is in an industrial area, but a short coach ride brought us to a more scenic bit of river:

Then we had the walking tour; others did a bicycling tour, or a food-related tour.  I decided not to do the food tour because I wanted to see and learn more about the town.

There is a historical show there but only in
German plus we didn't have time to stop.

We walked through a rose garden which had some lovely views (and signs warning of the far drop):

The old Rathaus, or town hall, built over the river:

I made sure to write down on the map where a yarn store should be.  It is tiny and tucked away, and our guide wasn't sure it would be open due to being sold in the last few months.  Another option turned out to be a general artist store, I couldn't see any fiber items, so I proceeded further.  I got lost and sorted out the way to the road.  Then I walked past it once and found it the second time:

The store had some samples, and quite a bit of commercial yarn, and some skeins by an indie dyer:

A couple of these came home with me.

I headed back to the square where we were to meet up for the coaches.  I was able to buy a butterhorn, the local version of croissant which the food tour was going to taste and watch being baked:

It was shatteringly crisp and a nice snack.  As you can see, it is full of butter, which quickly soaked through the paper.

Back to the boat and packing.  Some of the other passengers shared a bit of smoked beer with me as we watched the scenery roll past and chatted about going through the locks (there were around 147 on this trip, according to the captain) and I took some video showing how close we were through some, but this blog doesn't allow for posting those.  For some bridges, we could touch the underside!

I didn't mind the smoked beer, and it would be nice to use for cooking sausages, I think.  Or eating with grilled sausages.  But I'm not enough of a beer person for a full measure, so I was grateful to the persons who shared their bottle with me.