Inside the lock, taken from our room's balcony:
See what we mean about close? Here, we're rising up to reach the light of day again:
Don't know how many locks we passed through. We lost count. Anyway, next stop Regensberg. This was supposed to be a full-day stop and we'd planned to hit a laundromat we found online, wash some clothes, and spend the afternoon walking around this medieval town. As it turned out, the rush was on and we only stayed until 1:00 p.m. Fortunately, the laundromat was there as advertised. We'll spare you the photos of it.
August 6, Nuremberg, Germany. We were supposed to arrive midday, but actually got there at about 10:00 a.m. The busses (oh, no, not more busses) left at about 1:15 for a tour of Nuremberg. Our first stop was the Nazi Rally Grounds, which is a partially finished building that resembles the colosseum in Rome. It was supposed to be, however, 1/2 again larger than the Roman structure and contain the world's largest pipe organ (sorry Passau...or maybe Hitler meant to steal the one from Passau).
The Rally Grounds were supposed to have a roof with a skylight in the center that, when the sun came out, shed light on the directly on the speaker. Of course, there was only to be ONE speaker. Der himself. It was not finished because the Brits and Americans showed up and bombed Nuremberg practically into rubble. The reason that the city took a lot of bombing was because engines were being produced there. The tour drove by the famous Palace of Justice where the Nuremberg trials were held:
We visited the Palace, inside the city walls (which, by the way, are quite intact).
And we took in the view over the city from the Palace grounds. In this photo, see the Nazi Rally Grounds in the distance? Gives one a better idea of size!
We walked through Market Square (where the Christmas market is held). Here, detail from the "Beautiful Fountain". This statuary was covered with a concrete cocoon during the bombing and thus survived intact.
Another cathedral, we don't remember the name, but it's probably St. Stephans...
Now for more horror. Sorry, its got to be said: this whole thing was not well planned. The tour ended at 5 p.m. and in every city, there's traffic at that hour. We were stuck in traffic and didn't get back to the ship until 6:10 p.m. Then the Program Director wanted EVERYBODY in the lounge at 6:45 for the daily briefing because people had made choices for the next day's tours already and now everything was going to change. So, in our grubby touring clothes, we marched to the lounge where we were presented with four choices of tours for tomorrow. Kindly make your choice RIGHT NOW and turn in your papers. We had no reference material with us and no description of the various tours was given. We said screw it and wrote that we'd stay on board. At this point, we discussed never leaving the ship again until we saw the lights of Amsterdam, because at the upcoming stops, the passengers were to be let off for the bus tours and the ship would move on, picking them up downstream somewhere.
