Boat and Bastei

Somewhere in Viking River Cruise's handbook for employees, there's a rule that Viking never tell anyone anything that is less than optimum until everyone's on the bus with their luggage loaded. Adhering to this regulation, upon boarding the bus to Melnik to embark, we were told that the boat couldn't get that far up the River Elbe due to low water.  OMG, here we go again!!

Instead, we would be taking the scenic route along the river (that we should have been on) to Bad Schandau (hereafter referred to as "BS") for two overnights.  We prayed to all the river gods that the boat would be able to get out of BS...if not, it'd be the busses.  First day in BS, we stayed on board, visited the boat's library (OK, the boat's bookshelf) and found a book about local wines.  Jotted down the names of the local specialities and headed off to find the BS grocery store.  Great place, the Naukauf store, they had all the local wines.  From our dock next to the town parking lot, we could see that BS appeared to be a kickoff point for a number of people who were going hiking.  Walking around town, we saw photos of a rock bridge that must have been somewhere nearby.  When we got back to the boat, we realized that the next day, the shore tour was to that bridge!  Well, alrighty then, we'd go.

The park with the bridge is called Bastei.  The Bastei is a rock formation towering 194 meters above the Elbe in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains of Germany.  Reaching a height of 305 meters above sea level, the jagged rocks of the Bastei were formed by water erosion over one million years ago. They are the the major landmark of the Saxon Switzerland National Park.  They are also part of a climbing and hiking area that extends over the borders into the Bohemian Switzerland (Czech Republic).

The view of the valley was unbelievable:

And here's the Bastei Bridge, built in 1851 to replace the original wooden one:

All was right with our world after vising Bastei, especially since we had some of that local wine stashed in the room.  That evening, the boat had set up a German Buffet, complete with costumed staff members (our waiter looked great in lederhosen) and entertainment.

Then, back outside for another view of the Bastei Bridge, this time from the water, because we finally got moving!

And finally, the sunset from a moving boat:

Now we were on our way to Dresden and looking forward to it.  This was someplace we'd been wanting to see for years, ever since we saw a special about the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche after it was mostly demolished during WWII.