Cruise Reporting - Miltenberg, Wertheim, and ice cream

Saturday began with fitness classes and bistro breakfast, then off on tours.  Because the boat would move during the day, if you wanted to go on one tour you needed to leave in the morning, or you would be aboard for the whole day.  If you wanted only one tour you could use the other time to walk on your own or sit in a café or whatever you liked.  Just be sure to meet the bus at the correct time!

Also, if you did the biking it was a day that you had to commit to get to the other end of the ride no matter what, as you had to meet the boat.

I took the "Pearl of the Main" tour in Miltenberg, and the basic walking tour in Wertheim.  Both are very pretty little towns and I probably should have made notes when I was back on the boat, as they blend together a bit in my memory.

First, Miltenberg, and a walk up to the castle:

In many towns, they marked the highest floods.

  

The visitor center had items made by craftspersons of the town, in case you wanted a knitted or crocheted item as a souvenir or found yourself chilly during your visit:

The castle - we would walk there in a bit.  There was also a hike just to go there and around it, but we were more gentle in pace:

The oldest inn in town, and we were told "The King of the USA" stayed there, among other royalty.  Of course, they meant Elvis Presley:

See the design in at the top of the house?  That means it was inhabited by a baker when it was constructed, and the ground floor held the bakery.  It's now used by other businesses.

Views from and of the castle:

Yes, it was quite verdant up near the castle.

Of course, on our walkabout time, I found the old Jewish cemetery and said Kaddish:

Once these were pointed out to us by our guide, I started seeing them everywhere, and in other towns also:

  

It is a code to show you have donated to the church.  The numbers on either end indicate the year (and in some places, you'd see a rather old one such as "20*C+M+B+19") and the letters in between stand for Christus mansionem benedicat which translates to "May Christ bless this home".  Because the people who do the collecting and marking generally go around on Twelfth Night or thereabouts, some will tell you that the letters stand for Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, but that's not correct.

On the way to the bus to ride to Wertheim, a very cute little cat door:

Then to Wertheim, where I found a yarn shop, but it being a Sunday, the shop was closed:

The entry to town looks small because they raised 
the road some centuries back to avoid flooding.

Wertheim has a link to Alsace, so there was a little festival
of things French, including food and beverages.

   

   

Our guide took us to the former Jewish area, now just a memory:

The outlines show where the synagogue and mikveh stood.

Wertheim had memorials to Jews who left or were deported during the Shoah:

   

Something to note is that six-pointed stars hanging about are not a symbol of Judaism here; they represent a brewer, because of the six steps needed to make beer:

Obligatory walk around the cathedral.

  

That is the castle.  I walked up there during our free time.

These are markings of the highest floods, some more than two building stories:

  

Sometimes things don't go to plan.  Somebody bought a house and decided to knock it down and rebuild.  However, the cellars are interconnected and there arose a disagreement about whether they were properly accounted for in the planning, so everything came to a halt.  This included sealing up the walls of the buildings on either side:

Views from the castle.  I loved going up and seeing views.  Maybe because I spent so much of my life in the plains of the Midwest, and Texas?

We got back to the boat around lunchtime, and in the afternoon they offered an ice cream social.  We from the USA had to explain this to the Brits and other Europeans.

  

It was very hot, so you had to eat quickly!

The rest of the day was on the river, so there were times to see us go through the locks.  After supper and I thought about going to the evening performance, but ended up reading in my room instead.