Something I haven’t documented yet is the fact that we will be going through 66 locks in the course of this cruise; in fact, two instances of lockage occurred during the night. Since then, many of these elevation changes have taken place during daylight hours. Here’s one such lock.
Now that we are on the Main River and heading towards the Danube canal, they are getting more frequent and a lot deeper. They’ve also closed the upper sun deck to prevent decapitation due to lower bridges.
This morning, as we continued to sail towards Wertheim, we had a glass-blowing demonstration by a master craftsman on board the ship. I took no pictures but we did purchase a couple of blown Christmas ornaments.
Wertheim has a nice, compact old town set between the confluence of the Main and the Tauber River. And it was not a target of Allied “Morale Bombing” doing the war–too small and unimportant–and thus its old town is genuine.
The streets are narrow and twisting with many of the half-timbered houses encroaching on the airspace above by extending their upper stories out by an additional foot. Most of the roadways within the old town are labeled as “gasse” (alley) not “strasse” (street).
After our walking tour, Rob and I made the climb to the castle for lunch. It was very steep with much of the way being on slanted cobblestones. Thankfully, there were stretches of the route given over to stairs. Who could have imagined just a year ago that I would welcome the availability of stairs.
After beer, brats, spuds and a terrific panoramic view of the town from on high, we headed back down to visit their glass museum and gift shop.
Wertheim is a world-renown glass center, hence the onboard glass-blowing demonstration this morning. The local museum, however, was no Corning Museum of Glass. The first floor was mostly gift shop with one corner set aside as a glass-blowing demonstration space. (One was taking place when we stopped in.) The major museum part was upstairs. The display that I found most fascinating was a tray of glass eyes in various colors and configurations. Fascinating and a bit freakish.
We started meandering back to the boat.
But first, we had a quest. Our Red Group
had been challenged by our Program
Director to locate the oldest flood water
height indicator in the city with a
German beer as a reward. These historic
“markers” are located on random buildings
throughout the town–especially in the
area nearest to the river.
We found 1764. (l.)
However, the winning date was in the 1500’s.
Back to the ship and onward to Würtzburg.
Dutch to Deutsch: The Great Rivers of Europe 