We go to Munich! And wait…

by | Dec 11, 2023 | Photography

First, I need to say that we have lost all track of time. Not really time as much as dates. So often, I find myself asking Kathleen what day it is. Right now, I had to look up into the corner of my Mac’s screen to find out that it was Monday here (and still Sunday at home). This brings me to the fact that on Sunday (during the day—when the Seahawks were losing), we were on a “luxury motor coach” to Munich (which takes about 90 minutes).

Wait! I forgot to tell you about the night before. And maybe the biggest difference between river cruising and ocean cruising. Before dinner, every night, there is supposed to be (I say that because last night there was not) a talk by our Program Director (think Cruise Director) about the next day’s activities. So ours had said that our ship would stay docked in Regensburg overnight, and the next morning, we would get off and go to Munich (others who had not done the pre-cruise extension we did went back to Nuremberg), and most of those on board would spend the day in Regensburg doing a walking tour and then with time on their own. In the meantime, after everyone was off touring, the ship would move to Deggendorf, where we would all meet back up with her.

But that didn’t happen. What did happen was that when we got up to use the facilities in the middle of the night, we looked out, and the ship was moving. I am really moving. What had happened is that the weather had warmed up between the time we went to bed around 10:00 and 1:00 am when we started moving. The Captain was worried that if the snow melted and raised the river (even by a few inches), we would not be able to get under some of the lower bridges. So he basically turned on the jets and got us past those low bridges.

So when we woke up in the morning and went to breakfast, we could see we were moored on a river bank in the literal middle of nowhere. Seriously. No towns, houses or farms to be seen. All we could see was a line of trees with a road behind it. And on that road were two buses—one for Nuremberg and ours for Munich. After breakfast, they called us down at 8:30 (unlike ocean cruises, they make announcements that go right into your rooms), and we stepped off the gangway into muddy snow and made our way through some bushes to the waiting bus. I bet you never did that on an ocean cruise.

We (those of us going to Munich) thought that buses would be brought to that spot for those going to Regensburg, and they would tour from there. But later, we learned that everyone else on the ship stayed on until after lunch. The ship took the morning to get to Deggendorf, and then the folks who were supposed to go to Regensburg got on buses (that the Program Director had to find in a big hurry) and went even further back the way we had come to tour that city. What is interesting to note is that they (who went a much shorter distance) got back more than an hour after we got back from Munich. Also of note is that when we were headed home on our “luxury motor coach,” I asked our guide where the ship that we were headed left Munich, and I asked Reinhol to was docked; he had no idea. He said they were just getting out of Munich and on the road, and they would call him and tell him where they were.WHAT??? Sure enough, about an hour into a 90-minute bus ride, he gets a call and tells the driver where to take us.

Hopefully, you see what I mean about this cruise. It’s different than an ocean cruise; it’s very different. Another thing I told Kathleen was that I realized that doing private shore excursions instead of Viking excursions would be next to impossible. Where would you tell your guide to meet you? You could say come to one place and then wind up in another. A good example is this morning. We were scheduled to dock in Passau, Germany. Instead, we are docked in a small town in Austria. Those wanting to go to Passau’s Christmas Market (NOT ME) will be bussed back to Passau. It’s just crazy what they put up with to navigate the ins and outs of the Danube.

So, back to Munich. Because we got on the bus in the middle of nowhere, we had to navigate some pretty out-in-the-boondocks back roads to get to the Autobahn for the actual ride to Munich. This turned out to be the most beautiful part of the trip as we passed through so many small farming communities and beautiful fields and meadows. The sun was rising, and we saw deer, hares, villages in the distance, and so much more. The landscape was covered in snow (roads were clear), and we could see for miles in every direction from our “luxury motor coach.” Speaking of “luxury motor coaches,” we had a 48-passenger bus almost all to ourselves. There were only 12 of us on board.

This scenic part of the trip just killed me. Every time I turned around, I saw a perfect photograph. I mean perfect. I could have done an entire photographic coffee-table book just in the hour it took us to get to the Autobahn. But I didn’t get a single, usable photo. All I got was reflections of myself in the bus windows. Too much sun, in the wrong place and somewhat dirty windows. Just killed me.

When we finally got on the Autobahn, our aforementioned guide, Reinhold, told us, “We will drive for another 45 minutes and then make a rest stop at the BMW dealership. You can have a few minutes to look around and use the facilities and then we will be on our way.” We were kind or perplexed. Why would we stop at a BMW dealership to use restrooms? And why would we want to “look around?” Does Viking have a deal with BMW to help them sell us cars?

Well, it turned out that the “dealership” was the world headquarters of BMW and they had an entire BMW World for us to tour. For Kathleen and I who have two adult kids who LOVE BMWs, this was a big deal. (Brian and Michelle have four BMWs between the two of them, and my son Josh drives one too. Not to mention that Brian runs an independent repair shop that caters to European cars.) We loved touring BMW World, and I took plenty of pics to show them later. Finally, I can show them some travel photos so that they won’t fall asleep while we look at them ?. Here’s the stuff I shot at BMW World. Just snaps of cool cars so feel free to look at them on your phone if you want.

We stayed at BMW World for about 40 minutes, and then we were off to the old town of Munich to see their Christmas Market. Reinhold walked us through some historic buildings and areas around the Old Town. We got to see more Hitler sites (makes me sick to think about what went on there) and walked through a small Christmas Market (more about Christmas Markets in general later on) and then on to the Old Town (every city seems to have a downtown and an Old Town) Square where the BIG Christmas Market is. The square also had an amazing glockenspiel high on the front of the City Hall. There are pictures below, but our guide said that the sound of Europe was the church bells. So, I tried taking a short video so you could hear the bells striking noon but the wind was so bad all you could hear is the wind buffeting us.

We got a Viking-provided lunch at a GIGANTIC restaurant named Ratskeller in the basement of the city hall. When I say GIGANTIC, I am not kidding. The restaurant had so many nooks and crannies to stick diners into you would have thought it was a Thomas’ English muffin. The place holds 1100 people, all eating at the same time. And from the noise level, it was full when we got there.

Lunch (salad, a giant pretzel, stuffed cabbage and apple strudel) was delicious. Or maybe the giant glass of beer we drank with it made it delicious. It was after lunch that things went south.

Those of you who have read my posts about shore excursions know that I HATE when you are a long way from your ship and they take you on a tour, and then they say, “Now you have free time to SHOP.” We don’t shop. We really don’t. Well, we do but I grocery shop at home and we pretty much get everything else from Amazon.

This brings me to a rant about Christmas Markets. No, it is really a rant to myself for not realizing that every single Christmas Market would be exactly the same. And that on a “Christmas Market Cruise” you would see them every single day. From Lisboa to Prague to Nuremberg to Regensburg and now to Munich, they are all the same. They sell the same stuff (in many cases, it comes from Asia, so we know it is the SAME stuff), just at different prices. I have absolutely no clue why I expected anything else. What I thought about was the chance to walk around and take photos of the markets. The reality is that there are a bunch of well-dressed (if they are locals; those of us from ships look like we are wearing old, dirty clothes—because we are) people drinking hot wine, looking at Christmas trinkets, taking selfies, and just generally being festive. You can only go to so many Christmas Markets before you are so over them. I have now reached that point. I am done with Christmas Markets. Unless there is NOTHING else to do, I have been to my last one. You will have to really convince me that there is something there worth taking a photo of that I don’t already have a photo of.

Now, back to shopping. When we finished lunch at approximately 1:00 pm, Reinhold said, “You now have until 4:00 to shop. See you back here.” WTH??? I honestly can’t think of anything I want to shop for for three entire hours. Even if you plunked me B&H Photo in NYC, I couldn’t stand looking at stuff for that long. So Kathleen and I walked through the market (which means we squeezed through the market), and that took about 20 minutes. We have all the Christmas decorations we could ever want; we were stuffed from lunch, so we didn’t want to eat or drink. So what would we do for three hours in a sunny square where the crowds were growing by the minute, and the wind chill hovered around freezing? Did I mention that it was Sunday, which meant that there were no businesses, shops or any place you could go to escape the cold wind other than restaurants, and we had just eaten?

So we ended up walking around trying to find someplace to sit outdoors, in the sun but out of the bone-chilling wind. Not much luck. What were we going to do if we found it? Sit there for three hours? We tried getting into a Starbucks, but there was no dice. Everyone in there was ensconced in doing what we were trying to do. We finally returned to the place where we ate lunch and sat in their waiting area for about two hours until it was time to meet our guide and bus to return to the ship. TWO HOURS! While Kathleen, Jamie and Steve waited there, I walked around the area to see what other photos I could take that I hadn’t already taken. The answer was NOT A SINGLE ONE. I had taken everything of interest. It was just so frustrating. If we had known where the bus was parked, we could have gone there and sat on the warm bus. But they don’t tell you that. It got so bad that if we had known where the ship was, we might have hired a car to take us there. Stuck doing NOTHING for three hours is horrible. And since it was Sunday, even museums were closed, and the cathedrals had church services going on, so you couldn’t get in to take photos. Besides, my buddy Mike has the market cornered on church and cathedral photos, so I don’t even bother.

After our three-hour sentence was over (I forgot to mention that I couldn’t even play games on my phone because the power was down to 6%, and I had stupidly forgotten to bring my portable charger. You would think a “luxury motor coach” would have outlets or at least a USB port.) we boarded the bus for the ride back to the ship…wherever it was. As I mentioned earlier, after about an hour, Reindhold got a phone call to say it was in Deggendorf. To continue this comedy of errors, when we got to the village, we saw a Viking ship moored just below the bridge. So our bus went down a hill to get to it but as we got closer we told the driver and Reinhold that this was NOT our ship. It was A Viking ship, but not our Viking ship. So they had to call again and find out exactly where our Viking ship was. We took off to find it, which entailed recrossing the Danube again and then a bunch of U-turns. We finally got there and came on board, only to find that all the tours to Regensburg had not returned yet, and only those who had stayed on board or come from Munich were here. It was really quiet compared to the night before.

Right now, I am sitting in the lounge, and we have decided not to go out. It is raining pretty hard, but if it stops, I might walk up to the little Austrian village and see what I can find. In the meantime, I get to write this post and add these photos of Munich. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

There won’t be much to write about tomorrow since we are basically doing nothing today, so even you, my wonderful readers, will get a day off. Back again in a couple of days after we get to Vienna. Tomorrow is supposed to be Krems, Austria, but let’s be honest, it could be anyplace on the entire Danube River.

I liked Germany; I’m not into Berlin, it’s too huge and empty and imposing, but Munich was good.   —Graham Coxon

 

Trains, “Luxury Motor Coaches” and Boats

by | Dec 9, 2023 | Photography

We are finally onboard our Viking Longship, the Gullveig. Yesterday was kind of a little bit of everything day. We woke up in Nuremberg, had breakfast, I went across the street to one of the largest train stations in Europe to take some pictures (below), and then at noon, we boarded a “luxury motor coach” (which really was very nice) and headed to Regensburg, Germany to board the ship.

Here are the photos I took before we left Nuremberg. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

 

I need to take a second here to thank someone. When you do a pre or post-extension, you have a tour coordinator who is with you the entire time. That person just takes care of you. They know the schedules; they tell you when and where you need to be; they schedule buses and organize tours, and so much more. They even wind up loading luggage. Being a tour coordinator is all about logistics. And ours was amazing. Our tour coordinator was Victoria, and she always had a smile on her face. One of the nicest and, for sure, the most organized person I may have ever met. We just want to thank her here for taking such good care of us.

We arrived in Regensburg around 2:15 and were met by our Hotel Director, JP (that’s what he told us to call him because his name is amazingly hard to say) and his wonderful staff. This being our first river cruise, we were kind of expecting that embarkation would be easier than an ocean cruise, but we never knew how much easier it would be. In the space of 10 minutes, they got us off the “luxury motor coach” and onto the ship, looked at our passports, had a crew member escort us to our room, and we went up to lunch. We could have done it in five if we hadn’t chatted so long with Natalia, who took us to our room.

The chef and his staff had prepared a “light lunch” for everyone. We were not impressed. It was sad that this would be our initiation to Viking food. Lunch was just OK. Not a lot of food. There were salads, but the empty bowls were not being refilled when 30% of the incoming guests had not had lunch yet. The food was fine but not really that great. There was a broth with very little in it, half a Rueben sandwich that was grilled but sitting out so long it was cold, and that was about it. I am happy to say that dinner was much better.

After lunch, we went back and unpacked in our stateroom. If this trip has made one thing perfectly clear to us, it is this: WE HATE LIVING OUT OF SUITCASES. This might just be the biggest reason we cruise. We like getting someplace and unpacking, and that’s our home. And it moves every day. It was so wonderful to be able to put things away. And what really amazed us is the amount of storage in our fairly small stateroom. We put all our clothes away and still had empty drawers.

Speaking of the room, it is incredibly well-designed. It is (I am sure) smaller than the room we were in last night in Nuremberg, but it is so well-designed it actually feels bigger. The lighter colors help as well. Here are some pics of stateroom 213, our home for the next week.

After our little lunch and unpacking, there was a short, free, guided walk around the old parts of the city by a guide named Hubert Koenig. He was under the impression that he was not only a guide but a comedian and Olympic sprinter as well. He made the worst (and in some cases very sexist) jokes about everything, and as soon as he would tell one, he would race off, leaving most of this group behind—the EXACT opposite of all the guides we had had in Nuremberg and Prague.

He also just walked us to the middle of the city and left us. That was fine for me, but others got totally lost and ended up taking some strange and mysterious routes back to the ship. And the spot he left us was right next to a department store. If he had walked us up a half of a block, we could have seen one of Regensburg’s Christmas Markets (which I am glad that I found). Here’s the photos I took following this “wonderful man” around Regensburg.

After getting back to the ship, we had a wonderful dinner (the food was excellent for dinner, and there was just enough of it). All the tables in the dining room are for groups of six or eight, so you always have someone to have dinner with. We were joined by Carol from New Hampshire who is cruising alone after losing her husband since they purchased the cruise. She is a hoot. We look forward to sharing more meals with her in the coming week. Our server took a photo for us, and at the last minute, the head chef stuck his head in as well.

After dinner, we were off to bed as we had a full-day excursion into Munich tomorrow. The ship was scheduled to stay in Regensburg overnight, but changing river levels forced them to move us down the river during the night, and we are now south of Regensburg. Excursions to Regensburg will still go on, but they will have to be bused back to Regensburg. Right now they are scrambling to bus folks back that way. I will see you tomorrow with a report on Munich.

You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.  —Donald Rumsfeld

Rainy, somber and sobering Nuremberg

by | Dec 9, 2023 | Photography

Our room was as bad as I described in the previous post. It turns out that on our floor, they had all the hallway lights turned off, so it felt like you were marching down a corridor to your cell. There are still some really tiny rooms and even smaller bathrooms. Steve and Jamie had warned us to be careful because the floor was slippery when getting out of the shower. They were worried we might fall on the floor. When they said that I was amazed because I hadn’t seen a floor in the bathroom…it was that small. And the place has only ONE elevator for guests. Talk about lines.

We did get a decent night’s rest, found out the breakfast buffet isn’t equal to the Marriott in Prague and then I even got to go out (before it started raining) and shoot a few photos. They are below in the first gallery.

We were all (as was everyone else going on our longship) signed up for the included walking tour of old town Nuremberg. So off we went with our guide in some pretty bitterly cold temps. It was a tour with a short amount of walking (you can probably see every street in the Old Town in less than two miles of walking) and a lot of just standing in the wind and the cold and eventually the rain listening to our guide…who BTW, was very good. About halfway through the tour, the cold got to Kathleen’s sore knees, so I walked her back to the hotel and used the Find My app to find my brother, and I rejoined the tour.

The tour finished at the downtown Christmas Market. Now, this was a Christmas Market. Comparatively speaking, this one made the ones we saw in Lisboa and Prague look small. And lots of things to buy as opposed to the majority of stalls just being food. I took some photos while we did this tour, which are below. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Steve and Jamie decided to hang out at the Christmas Market and get lunch at a nearby restaurant, so I walked back to the hotel and got Kathleen, and we had lunch on our own. We found a little place in Old Town that looked good…and it was. We both loved what we ordered. Kathleen got the schnitzel, and I got the Sauerbraten. Both were out of this world. Add in two really great German beers, and it was a lunch fit for a king and queen. Having lunch on our own is a big deal for us on December 8th. We call it Magic Day. It’s the day, way back in 1997, when we first met in person (after corresponding for three weeks online). We say it was “magic.”

After lunch came the somber and sobering part of our day. I had signed up for a Nuremberg’s Place in WWII tour. Some of you may not know this, but my college degree is in History and Political Science. So, I am an avid history person. Or at least I used to be. In my sophomore year in college, I had a professor named Dr. Reccow. I still consider him the best instructor I had during my college experience. He taught History, and his favorite was European History of the 20th Century. He was in his late 60s when I took his classes (I took every class he taught), and he was a survivor of the Holocaust. He was also an amazing lecturer. He taught his classes with such drama, describing the horrors, tragedies, and triumphs as well. We watched numerous documentaries about Hitler’s rise to power, the horrible things he and the Nazis did, as well as many of them getting their final justice here in Nuremberg.

To be honest, I was expecting this four-hour tour to be mostly about the post-war trials because I did not realize how much of a part Nuremberg played in Hitler’s rise to power. Our first stop was at Zeppelin Field. As soon as the bus pulled up, I knew where we were. In the countless documentaries I have seen of Hitler speaking, he was standing on the podium of this gigantic field. He held his largest rallies here. It could hold almost 200,000 people. More like 200,000 sheep listening to him spew his hatred. This was the start of his power, and he directed his master architect, Albert Speer, to build these gigantic edifices to honor him and his horrible ideas. It was truly sobering to be at the place where what I consider to be the worst evil the world has ever known all started.

We also toured an unfinished indoor Colosseum that Hitler had started constructing, but it was never finished. It was built to house winter rallies when the weather was like what we were experiencing by then—heavy rain and bitter cold.

Inside a very small part of this half-built edifice (you will be able to see the size of this space in my photos below) is an exhibit that tells the story of Hitler’s rise to power as it relates to Nuremberg. The exhibit was divided into four parts, encompassing the years between the end of World War I and the end of the Nuremberg War Crimes trial in 1946.

I almost forgot to mention that we had one of the best guides I have ever had toured with, leading us through these dark and horrible places. Werner was a guide from a non-profit organization called History For All. Their goal is to educate all people about the evil that grew, existed and was finally brought to justice here in this city. He did an amazing job of doing that, and I found myself hanging on to his every word. He knew his history, and like Dr. Reccow, he did an amazing job telling it to us and making it come alive.

After we had toured the exhibits, we were back on the “luxury motor coach” to cross Nuremberg to see the courtroom where all this hatred and horror finally got justice. On every bus ride we took, Werner would fill us in either with more history or with his thoughts on his city. It was so clear what a passion he had for his work of educating people about the Nazis. One of the reasons he said that his organization was founded is that following the war, most Germans just didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Many expressed total disbelief that the Holocaust had even happened. So they started this organization (History For All) to make sure that people knew and, more importantly, remembered what had happened. And as Werner said, today we. have the rise of the neo-Nazis who believe that maybe (in some ways) Hitler was right. Let me just state right here that Hitler was NEVER right. Not in any way. And no one should want history to repeat itself.

Another thing I fully realized (of course, I knew this prior to our visit) is how much the rhetoric, ideas and tactics of Donald Trump and his ilk around the world are very much like those Hitler employed. Only Hitler used radio, newspapers and public speeches, and today’s leaders use the internet.

Something I learned that I had never thought of before was that not only did the trials at Nuremburg seek to provide justice and punishment to the Nazis but they also established four areas of crimes that had not been considered in the same way before. The Nazis tried at Nuremberg were tried for “(1) crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements), (2) crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide), (3) war crimes (i.e., violations of the laws of war), and (4) “a common plan or conspiracy to commit” the criminal acts listed in the first three counts.” (My source for these four crimes is here.)

Before the trials, none of these were considered punishable crimes. There were no “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity.” Now there are. And now, African dictators and leaders like Putin can be put on trial for these offenses. Hopefully, that will happen to our “friend” from Russia someday as well as many other dictatorial rulers from around the world.

Getting down off my soapbox, here are the photos I took inside the famous Courtroom 600, where the trials were held, as well as stuff I took earlier in the day. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After we visited the courthouse, we went back to the hotel to try and find someplace for dinner. IMPORTANT ADVICE: If you ever come to Nuremberg at Christmas, make sure to pre-book reservations for dinner. We could not find a single restaurant with an opening in the Old City. That meant another lousy meal (especially the service) in the hotel bar. The hotel restaurant was even totally booked.

After dinner, I went back to take photos of the lights in the Christmas Market but was sadly disappointed that almost all their lights were exactly the same color…gold. So far, the lighting award goes to Lisboa. Here the pics I took that night. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.  —Adolf Hitler

Prague—cold and icy but still interesting

by | Dec 7, 2023 | Photography

Goodbye Lisboa, Hello Prague

When I last wrote any real content, we were still in Portugal. As I mentioned briefly yesterday, the day of our flight from Lisbon to Prague was pretty uneventful. We had breakfast at the hotel, hung out in our room until 10:45, got picked up by our driver from Welcome Pickups right on time at 11:00, and we were off to the airport. Other than a long line at security, everything went pretty smoothly. 

Three hours later, we arrived in Prague. It was there that we were meeting my brother Steve and my sister-in-law Jamie, who we would travel with for the rest of the trip. They were supposed to have gotten in much earlier than us, as they were coming from LAX on KLM. Originally, they were scheduled for about a two-hour layover in Amsterdam before flying on to Prague, but the day before they were to leave, they received a note from KLM that their Prague flight had been canceled. YIKES! 

But everything worked out in the end. KLM was able to get them on another flight, but with a layover of more than five hours in Amsterdam. In what might have been fate, we got off our plane in Prague, walked up two gates to the restrooms, and when I came out, they were standing there. Their flight had arrived two gates down from ours…in an airport with four terminals, each with more than 25 gates. You have to admit, that’s pretty amazing. 

We were met by a rep from Viking Cruises because this is where our pre-cruise extension started. So now we (and all our travels) were their problem ?.

As we drove into the city, we noted that not only was it cold, but there was snow and ice everywhere. This would play a big part in the next day’s plans. 

When we got to the hotel (Viking uses a number of them in Prague—we were at the Prague Marriott), Steve and Jamie, who had been up since the day before at home (about 30 hours), were off to bed. Kathleen and I went into the hotel restaurant and split a sandwich before we did the same. 

Ice and Snow

The next morning, I had truly hoped to do my customary pre-dawn photo walk, but when I got up and saw that it was well below freezing and that the snow and ice were VERY slippery, I stayed in and wrote Tuesday’s post about our trip to Sintra.

The hotel provided a huge buffet breakfast that was part of our Viking extension, and we truly enjoyed it. My brother Steve said it passed the “Steve Test (he would eat there if it were a restaurant near his home). After breakfast, we were supposed to do a “Panoramic Tour of Prague” with Viking as part of our cruise. The tour was labeled as “challenging” in their description, but we were still going to try and give it a go with the idea that if it became too much for Kathleen’s knees, hip or back, we would bail and go back to the hotel. But now there was the problem of the ice. 

I decided to put on my boots and go out to walk around and see how slippery the sidewalks were. What I found was not good. I walked from one end of the block the hotel was on to the other. Along the way, I almost fell three times, and I saw at least four other people slip and wind up flat on their butts. On some of our most recent trips, going out for a walk has not been real fun for us. A few years back, Jamie slipped and fell while visiting us and broke her kneecaps. In May of 2021, Kathleen tripped while we were doing a shore excursion in San Francisco (on dry pavement) and broke her elbow, which meant a six-hour trip to the ER and surgery a few weeks later. I had fallen two years ago on ice a block from our old condo and really hurt my back. So only Steve seemed immune. 

Kathleen, Jamie and I elected to skip the morning tour and see if the sidewalks got any better as the day went on. Steve decided to brave it and headed out on the tour. At about 10:00 am, I decided to go and test again, and I walked for about 15 minutes and wound up in the central square of Prague, where their largest Christmas Market was going. This allowed me to get some photos (you can see them below) and to tell Kathleen and Jamie we could do our afternoon tour—a visit to Lobkowicz Palace. 

Visiting a Palace

Our morning tour (that three of us skipped) was one of Viking’s included tours. When you do their pre or post-excursion, you get a free tour every day, so skipping it was no big deal, but the Lobkowicz Palace was a tour we paid for and included lunch, a concert and a private tour of the palace. We really wanted to go. So at 11:30, Viking transported the three of us to meet Steve and the rest of the tour he had gone on that morning at the castle, where we would do some touring around before getting to the Palace. 

When it came time for the morning tour to end, it turned out that only the four of us would be going on to the palace. The rest who were finishing up the morning tour would return to the hotel. At this point, Kathleen’s knees (which she had really strained on the TukTuk ride in Lisboa) told her not to walk any further, and she headed back to the hotel with the morning tour bunch. 

Jamie, Steve and I went on and did the Palace. When we got there, after only walking about five minutes, I truly wished Kathleen had come with us. We were ushered into a beautiful room and fed a delicious lunch. Then, we were escorted to another room where a classical trio (one violinist, one cellist and one pianist) played a selection of classical pieces for us. They were very good. 

After the concert, our guide led us to a private balcony at the back of the palace where we could see incredible views of all of Prague. Of course, I took a ton of photos. The city looked like a Christmas dream, all draped in snow. 

After the balcony viewing, we were off to see the collection of art housed in the Palace. This kind of thing usually does nothing for me, but I have to say this was one of the best audio tours of a gallery I have ever heard, and I got a lot out of it. It was thoroughly enjoyable. The entire time, I kept thinking, “I wish Kathleen had stayed.” 

But then it was time to board the bus back, and we were led down what must have been a 300-yard, fairly steep ramp covered in ice and snow. It was at that exact moment that I was thankful she had gone back to the hotel. Even with a rail to hang on to, that ramp was a bit scary. And then, when we got to the bottom, we had to walk about another 150 yards to get to the bus through ice and slush. 

All this would have been a real problem for her, and I was so glad she had headed back earlier when the bus had left from where we had originally arrived—a very flat walk to get to.

To top it off, on the bus trip back, there were two sets of Viking cruisers. Some of the people on the bus were just finishing their cruise. They were doing their post-cruise extension in Prague (we are going in the opposite direction and doing Budapest at the end), and because of that, they were staying at a different hotel—a huge Hilton about 20 minutes from our hotel. Because it was closer to the Palace, we went to the Hilton first, where all but the three of us got off. The only problem we had then was that the bus driver had taken his usual route through a parking lot, and someone had parked their car illegally, and he could not move the bus until that car was moved. We sat on the bus while the hotel management tried to find out who owned the car before we gave up. We went into the Hilton and got a cab back to the Marriott. It was not the bus driver’s fault, but Viking should have done a better job of taking care of us. They said that they could get us a cab, but when we got to their tour desk, they said they would need to get the expenditure (around $8 US) approved and that might take a while. At this point, it was almost 5:00 pm, and we had 6:00 dinner reservations, so we decided to pay for our own taxi and got back to our hotel in less than 10 minutes. 

An amazing dining experience

Speaking of dinner reservations, a good friend we know from our Trilogy Travel Club back home had lived in Europe for a few years and either lived in Prague or visited often (I am old, I don’t remember which) had told me about a small, out-of-the-way steak place. Now, I am not really into steak, but I know my brother is, so I said great and made reservations. WOW! I am certainly glad I did. It was one of those dining experiences you only get once or twice on a trip. The place was a tiny, almost below-ground-level restaurant that had so much charm it spilled out the front door. It reminded me of a party mix…it was packed full of Czechs ? (I owe my granddaughter $1 for that one). We were the only non-natives in the place, and it was PACKED! 

We opened our menus and saw a wonderful option just perfect for the four of us. It was a steak platter featuring five different cuts of steak, with three sauces and four side dishes for less than $100 USD. Add that to the two excellent bottles of a good red wine we drank, and we had quite the meal. This restaurant not only passed the Steve Test for me, but if it was near our house, I might go there every couple of weeks. The food and service were top-notch, and the prices were a great value. Especially when the servers only expect a 10% tip. We had a wonderful time. If you are ever in Prague, make it a point to eat at Bila Krava (which I am pretty sure means White Cow). You will not be sorry. BTW: That platter with the sauces and sides was plenty for us. And it was totally delicious.

Of course, after that, it was an $8 Uber back to the hotel and bed. We had a big day coming up on Thursday. 

At this point, let me show you the photos I got yesterday around Prague and at the Palace. Hope you enjoy them. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Our Jewish Quarter Tour, then on to Nuremberg.

In the morning, after a repeat of Wednesday’s superb buffet breakfast, we were off on a tour that featured much less walking than the one Steve had taken the day before and a lot more chances to sit down during talks that Kathleen could take advantage of. Plus, we would be in and out of buildings all morning so that we would stay much warmer. 

Our tour was of the old Jewish Quarter in Prague. We got to visit five separate synagogues and hear about all the horrible things that had been done to the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia for centuries. 

But we also saw some true beauty in these incredible places of worship as well as some horrible sadness in the synagogue that is covered with the thousands of names of Czech Jews killed by Hitler and the Nazis. 

The tour took most of the morning, and our tour guide, Eva, was EXCELLENT. In fact, all our guides here in Prague have been excellent. Steve truly liked the very nice lady who did the morning tour, and we joined him for the end of that tour. He thought she did great as well. 

The Jewish Quarter tour lasted until noon when we returned to the hotel, got some lunch, walked out to find a piece of local artwork (those of you who have been in our home know where that’s going), and then we boarded a “luxury motor coach” to Nuremberg, Germany where we will spend tonight. As I am typing this, I am truly sitting in that luxury motor coach (no sarcasm intended here—it is a really, really nice bus. If it only had WiFi, it would be perfect) headed to Nuremberg. It’s 3:39 in the afternoon here, and we won’t be at our Nuremberg hotel for another three hours, so I thought I would do a little writing on the way. Next up for you are my photos from our Jewish Quarter tour. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

As I write this, it is Thursday morning…you are still enjoying Wednesday evening…and I am up posting this at 4:45 am. We are staying at the Grand Meridian Hotel in Nuremberg. It (like our Prague hotel) is a Marriott, but a much older and historical one that they purchased. Older and historical means…strange and weird to me. The rooms are tiny, the doors open out into the corridors/hallways, the bathrooms are minuscule with tubs with high sides, and the WiFi is slow. They are passing the hotel off as a “historic, boutique hotel.” I myself like boutique hotels. The Hotel Portugal we stayed in in Lisboa was a “boutique hotel.” This one is just depressing to me, with long dark corridors and a single (JUST ONE) elevator to cover a hotel with a capacity of more than 80 guests per floor on six floors. Coming in and out with luggage can be a long wait. And that elevator holds about five people max. Needless to say, Viking picked this hotel, not me.

We had a quick dinner (if you can call it that) in the hotel bar before retiring to our cells ? for a good night’s sleep (the beds aren’t bad). The place just seems like an expensive jail or maybe an abbey or a convent (to me). We are here for two nights before we depart for Regensburg, where we. board our longboat for our first-ever river cruise. More about our Nuremberg adventures coming up soon.  (Editor’s note: the quote below is my reaction to the names in the Jewish Synagogue in Prague. Sorry if I offend anyone.)

A thousand years will pass, and the guilt of Germany will not be erased.  —Hans Frank