G & J away from home

Monday, 11 May

Further adventures of the boat that won't go.  Last night they decided the scheduled visit to Regensburg in Germany was too much of a stretch from our temporary home in Schlogen (3 hours each way on the bus) and instead the day trip would be to Passau (1 hour each way) and for those going would include lunch in the town with 15 Euros toward it courtesy of Avalon.


Onboard

Gary went off on the buses at 9.30 and I stayed aboard (as did nine others), hoping to get some good out of the very intermittent internet connection.  (Not much luck with that.)  Sitting at the dock I managed to get a photo of the little bird who was enjoying sitting on the ropes connecting us to the bank, so just outside the open windows of my stateroom.

Visiting bird

 For a while I sat in the Club lounge (at the back of the boat, and remarkably peaceful without the engines going) looking out over one of the best views of many gret views down the Danube.  This one was on a very sharp bend in the river and included a little ferry (in the middle left of the photo) which was busy the whole time taking cyclist from one side of the Danube to the other.  We've previous seens notices for a Danube cycle path so I imagine that's what the ferry passengers were doing.

It was a lovely spot and much appreciated since it seems like we won't be getting much more time in the ship.

View across to the other bank

At lunch time the hotel manager quite unexpectedly announced that we were sailing at midday, downstream back to Linz as the company wouldn't let us continue upstream on one engine with the river level as high as it is.  Back to the world of internet connections?  Let's go!

This part of the cruise is something I missed yesterday as we were out touring the Austrian Lake District so it's been great to see it.  Very beautiful scenery while the 10 of us stay-at-homes were eating lunch in the Panorama Lounge and now we're in a lock.

Entering the lock

A lock that has internet connection!

Not sure how far the buses with Gary and the Passau day-trippers are going to have to drive to catch up with us, though.  For most of them this will be twice in two days that the boat has not been waiting where they expected it to be.

Putting out the gang-plank as we waited for the Passau tourists

Passau

Here are some of Gary's photos from the Passau tour.

Cathedral

The organ recital was very, very loud and Gary was one of the people who escaped as soon as they could, but not before taking this photo of part of the organ:

Centre section of the organ

With his 15 Euros of lunch money from Avalon Gary got a smoothie and apple strudel in custard:

Gary's lunch

Cathedral and vapour trails

Back Onboard

As it was our last 24 hours onboard Gary took a lot of photos around the ship, including these with the sun shades dropped down so the ship can fit under a low bridge:

Sun deck with the awnings down

Bistro deck sun shade down

The bridge can also be lowered, and when it goes down far enough there is a trapdoor in the roof out of which the captain can pop up and look around.

Here's a photo of the bar and Victor the barman:

Victor manning the bar

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