We started our tour of Passau at 9:45 with Martina, our local tour guide. We were with her for just less than 2 hours. During that time, we learned about the three river city, walked over to the Inns river and you could see that it was moving much faster that the Danube. It’s a glacier-fed river from the Black Forest, and the color was slightly greener. There were no boats on this part of the Inns because of the dam upstream. In 2013 Passau experienced a horrible flood and in some ways are still recovering. We had a great view of the pilgrimage building looking across the Inns. We also,learned that Germany has 1250 breweries, and produces 5000 types of beer, and Bavaria is the leader of all the states. In Passau , the breweries all painted yellow and have a chimney, so they are easily identified.

We walked by where the executioner of the town used to live. And there is now a comedy club there in its place. Above the comedy club is a statue of St Nepomula , the patron Saint of rivers. We arrived at the town hall just in time to hear the bells ring. You could see lines drawn on the side of the clock tower representing the height of the floods. The flood in 2013 was the highest since 1501. From this location, we had a good view of the fortress on the hill. Martina pointed out that the building on the far right had fake pointed Windows on the bottom row, and the building was built is 1499, but the four looks more like a fish standing up, but it’s half of an 8. We learned why Neil Armstrong was at the opening of the Glasmuseum. Actually the hotel is in which it’s located is the Hotel Wilde.they thought it would be a good idea to heve the wildest person they could think of be there for the opening, and invited Neil.

We walked briefly along the artists walk that had 24 galleries, however none were open. Each artist was given s plain white umbrella, and was asked to paint it however they wanted. So the street has the umbrellas hanging above it. We walked next to the new bishop’s residence, that was built in the Rococo style. It was a pale blue with white accents and very symmetrical. On the side, only one entrance way worked, the others were fake. The St Stephan’s baroque style cathedral was right next to the residence. It was quite magnificent, and has the largest cathedral organ in the world. It has 17,874 organ pipes, has 5 parts that all can be played by one main keyboard. We all went to the organ concert at 12pm. It was only a 30-minute concert, and that was enough for me. The organ wasn’t the only amazing feature of the cathedral. The frescos, statues, alters were all beautiful.

After the concert we had free time before casting off at 5:30. Mom and I walked around the city, but it was getting quite cold, and felt like it could snow. We struggled finding a path to St Paul’s church, but eventually did through Simons, where we stopped for e hot chocolate, some lebankucken, and ran into George and Carol, who were doing the same thing. There were a few shops along this street, but we went directly to this dark pink church. The entry doors were closed, but we saw other people exiting. The doors were enormous. Inside it was white, except for the black and gold alters. Very different.

We decided to slowly walk back to the ship from here, we were cold, a little tired, and felt like sitting for a spell. We were looking forward to hearing what others did during the day.