August 8 – Ship Transfer/Passau Germany

This morning our ship moored in Linz, Austria.  Unfortunately, we are not able to spend any time here.  Our luggage was outside our room by 7:00am and we were all on a bus for an excursion by 8:30.  We opted for the excursion to Passau, Germany.

This old town is at the confluence of the Danube River, the Inn River (from the South) and the Ilz River from the North.  It’s a pretty little town with windy streets, cobblestones and old buildings.  

Our first drive was up to the Veste Oberhous, a fortress from the 13^th Century that served as the stronghold of the Bishop of Passau.  The intent of the drive up was to give us views of the city from the overlook.  And the views were very good.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go into the fortress itself.  The disadvantage of large group tours…never enough time.

Then it was back down to the river front where we disembarked the bus and headed out through the street of town.  The first “main” attraction was the artist’s street, a narrow old street where many artists reside. 

One very interesting aspect of this area of the town is that no one is allowed to live in the basements of the buildings.  The Danube periodically floods (and sometimes quite dramatically) and it is too dangerous to live in these lower areas of the buildings.

The streets are narrow and windy and some of these streets are limited to pedestrians.

Some of the doors retained the transoms.  These were originally used to pass food and goods into residents of the houses when they were quarantined because of disease.

We then walked up to the Bishop’s Palace square, a smallish square (that wasn’t really square) with a large fountain, some restaurants, and the bishop’s palace itself.  Other than having the palace pointed out to us there really wasn’t much else to see.  

We were right by a church at noon, when the church bells rang.

***********************************

Watch video with church bells.

***********************************

Plus we were on a tight timeline to get to St, Stephen’s Cathedral for the noon organ concert. 

Churches have existed on this site since 730 but the current one dates from 1693.  It is in the baroque style. We could see very little of the exterior as it was covered by scaffolding and netting (a common occurrence on old buildings in Europe).  However, the interior was magnificent.  It was covered with statuary and murals and gold leaf everywhere.

The organ is the largest cathedral organ in the world with 17,774 pipes and 233 registers.  The half hour concert was loud and energetic.  None of the pieces played were familiar to either of us.  Mary very much enjoyed the concert.  Paul not so much.

We then headed out for lunch on our own followed by a visit to the Bishop’s Palace.  

The museum included one room that had many items from the treasury of the church and three staterooms that were unfurnished but were obviously opulent in their day.

We stopped at another sidewalk café for dessert .

The café was on a square overlooking Veste Oberhous on the hill above, where we had stopped for views earlier in the day.

One of the buildings had marks showing the high water levels for various floods...and some of the high water marks were very high indeed.

We then headed back to the bus for the hour and a half drive to the middle of nowhere on the Danube River.  Our new boat is the AmaPrima, laid out exactly like our previous boat.  The staff and crew were lined up to welcome us aboard.

This evening’s entertainment was the “Sounds of Austria”, two women singers accompanied by an awesome pianist.  They sang several Mozart opera pieces, and several folk songs.  And of course a number of piece from the Sound of Music.  Very enjoyable.