The Two Towels

Days 11 to 13 - 26 to 28 May
OK, perhaps I'm being just a little too cute with the title for this post, but there are so many towers around here that 'The Two Towers' would have just been too easy.
We have two bath towels in our cabin, and mine is the one on the right.  Either I'm particularly dirty, or the towels were different colours to start with (spoiler alert: they were different colours to start with).  When you think about it, having different coloured towels is a very good idea - better than wondering which towel is yours on a daily basis.

Is it possible that these two towels started out the same colour?

Compound Noun Time
In a new segment I've decided to offer a compound noun, with smart phone translation.  This time its:

Steuerberater means 'Tax Advisor', but that's not the compound noun I'm interested in

Grundstucksverwertungsgesellschaft translates to: Basic Stucco Collecting Society. Interestingly, the German word is 34 characters, whereas the English version is only 28 letters (still only 31 characters even if you include the spaces between the words).

Day 11 - 26 May
The day started with the usual all-a-sumo-wrestler-could-eat breakfast.  After a break to allow us to waddle back to our cabins and freshen up, we convened in the main lounge for a special morning entertainment session with Tomy Temerson, a world famous zither player.  For those of you wondering, this is a zither:

A Zither

The most famous piece of zither music is the Harry Lime Theme from the movie 'The Third Man'. Playing a zither is something like playing a guitar and a harp at the same time - but probably more difficult.  The entertainment was very good and we were inspired to buy one of Tomy's CDs.

Tomy Temerson rocking the lounge

Guess I know what music we'll be playing the next time we entertain back in Canberra.
The next item on our schedule was lunch - the zither session having depleted our energy reserves. After lunch we went ashore for a walking tour of the lovely town of Miltenberg.  The following photos show you some of the highlights.

Strolling into Miltenberg - not exactly a highlight

Pretty street

Lovely drinking fountain

Beautiful town square

No caption necessary

An old hotel in Miltenberg - The 'stone effect' on the lower walls is mostly painted on

After Miltenberg we boarded buses for the short trip to Wertheim, another scenic town.  Some views of Wertheim follow.

Sure, it's another castle, but we got up close and personal with this one

View of Wertheim from the castle - in my opinion this is the best view of Wertheim, because you can't see the castle

Looking down into the town

After a brief stroll around Wertheim it was back to the ship, for dinner.  At least one member of the group was pretty happy with his day.

Peter was very much the thorn between two roses

Day 12 - 27 May
With all the food we're eating you wouldn't be surprised if we were putting on a bit of weight, but the ship appears to be getting a little chubby too.  Here's a photograph of the space between the side of the ship and a lock we passed through.

The crew are brilliant at sailing the ship - keeping things smooth and avoiding solid objects

On 27 May we visited the historic town of Wurzburg.  The main venue for the visit was the 'Residenz Palace', which was stunning.  We weren't allowed to take photos inside the palace (major bummer) but I downloaded a couple of shots from the internet, taken prior to the ban on indoor photography. Our visit was spectacular and enjoyable.

The outside of the Residenz Palace in Wurzburg

The entrance hall - a photo simply doesn't do it justice

Breathtaking room inside the Residenz - the plasterwork had to be seen to be believed

Out in the gardens - Rhonda squeezing me so hard that a jet of water is erupting from the back of my head

Nice symmetry in an unmodified photo taken in the garden - is the cloud raining on the fountain, or the fountain shooting water into the cloud?

The gate from the gardens back into the town

After leaving the Palace gardens we strolled around the town, which had many interesting things to look at.

Of all the interesting things we could have looked at, Rhonda chose another castle

One of the more poignant things we saw were 'stumble stones'.  Brass plaques set into the pavement marking where citizens of Wurzburg had lived before being 'deported' (Deportiert) to be 'murdered' (Ermordet) in concentration camps during WW2.

Three Wurzburger residents who were killed in concentration camps during WW2 

Then it was back to the ship for lunch and more sailing.

Maggie, Joanne, Lyn and Robin sitting the exam we all take after each visit - to make sure we listened to the tour guides

The day finished with an incredible dinner - a special wine tasting meal.  Four photos of the food are shown below. 

This is the first course - thankfully the servings weren't huge

Then came soup

After which we had main course

Finished off with dessert

After that we were entertained by Thorsten Loher, a guitarist/singer playing rock and roll.

You can't see it clearly, but many replaced hips were swaying in time to the music

Day 13 - 28 May
By now we were all wondering just how much more of this treatment we could take (apparently another week of it according to the itinerary).  This day we got to visit Bamberg - you've probably worked out the pattern by now, Bamberg is another historic town.  It would have to be one of the more beautiful towns we've visited, as you can see from the photos below.

Stunning

You can't have an historic town without some wonky buildings

It wasn't all just beautiful views of historic buildings, however, there were the strawberries.

Strawberries - picked when they were ripe

Unlike back in Australia, the Europeans pick their strawberries when they are ripe - note how there are almost no white bits on these strawberries.  Somebody should tell the supermarkets and strawberry pickers in Australia to stop messing us around with half-ripened strawberries - strawberries stop ripening when you take them off the bush.

Yawn - another beautiful building

A Palace - we visited the garden behind the Palace a little later

Here's part of the garden

Lyn - a rose among roses

After our guided tour we had time to stroll around the town.

Locks on a bridge in Bamberg - note how the Germans hang their locks neatly, unlike the romantic but messy lock-hangers in Paris

See, no attempt to hang the locks neatly on this bridge in Paris

Quirky but cute - knitted covers on the bike and bollards along the street

Then it was back to the ship, or rather the place where the ship should have been.  While we were waiting for the ship to arrive the ladies gave Lea flowers for her birthday.  They decided to give flowers a week before Lea's birthday so she could enjoy them for longer - if they'd given Lea flowers on her birthday she would have had to throw them away the next day when we left the ship at the end of the cruise.

Rhonda, Joanne and Lyn with Lea and her flowers - Maggie wasn't available when we took the photo

Luckily for us the ship soon appeared and we boarded in time for a well-deserved, if not well-constructed lunch.

Robin with chips and cheese for lunch

The late-afternoon happy hour came and some of our hardy travellers played cards.

Lea, Rhonda, Robin and Joanne playing cards

Then it was time for another fabulous dinner.  For one of my four courses (I skipped the appetiser) I chose a delicious consommé.  It occurs to me that consommé is like a homoeopathic soup - diluted until the water contains only the memory of the ingredients.  To be fair, however, there was colour and delicious flavour to my soup.

Homoeopathic soup

I have no photographic evidence of my main course, although I'm pretty certain it was delicious.  My dessert was worthy of  memorialisation, so here it is.

Baked apple and a small pile of wobbly (but very tasty) stuff for dessert

That was it for another day.  Hope that everybody reading this blog is happy and healthy.  We'll be back with another post in due course.