Towns along the Main-Danube Canal

Warzburg on the Main River has a beautiful residence for the Bishop- built in the same era as Versailles-with many artistic decorations in the rooms- used for grand receptions as well as daily meetings and conferences and living for the prince-bishops family.  It looked all fancy and ginormous and frescoed, and gilded and such, but was one of the few places where pictures are not allowed; no idea why they don't allow them- but I can't show you any.  

We then drove through the beautiful farmland countryside to the town of Rothenberg- a walled medieval city with many decorated buildings with those great metal signs hanging out with symbols and figurines representing the shop or craft.  We will have to get our iron (and gold) working equipment so that we can make cool signs that distinguish our houses.  Noah-you can start with your sign- Brown Abbey- because we all like to gather there.  Once you've got the hang of it you can make our house sign.  The prince-bishops call their large houses "residences"- they often have an old and a new one, so maybe our sign can say Brown Residence-with flags representing the five families. It will be a side business.  You're going to love it!

Some very interesting rooflines.

And great gated archways- the gates are no longer needed to keep the ad guys out-all are now welcome to stay and eat and buy things.  Every street or alley is enchanting.

Then we drove two hours to Bamberg to get on the new ship because that's where it was waiting for us.  Some of the ships still couldn't get up from Vienna but we are supposed to be able to get down.  In the morning we saw Bamberg on a walking tour.  That was pretty good although it was "stinking hot" as somebody we know would say.  So Judy stayed on the ship after lunch and heard a lecture from someone from town and I went back and got all hot and sweaty again to walk along the streets and river, and saw a ceramics museum located in the old town hall that was built on an island to unite the two sides of the town long ago.

 They seem to have trails and parks along the rivers and canals.  I walked just upstream from town and entered a park that goes for a mile- with concessions and fenced off areas for picnicking and swimming.  The American River parkway is a good start- but we should continue to creat more parks for access to our waterways. They have had locks for a long time- here is one along the river (for bypassing rapids) along one of the parkways in Bamberg.

The next morning we awoke on the canal in Nuremberg and had a bit of a drive around tour as well as a walking tour which we enjoyed together- the walls were quite large with a very big moat around the entire town-maybe a half mile across.  The town was an important trade town with some artists and another prince-bishop.  The Nazis selected it as their demonstration town for huge rallies. We saw the Nazi parade ground and got out and looked at it for a few minutes.  We drove by the Nuremberg courthouse where the first war criminals were tried.  We had started the morning with someone coming on board and giving us a lecture on WWII through now.  It had to be cut short because we were leaving for our tour-we need longer days to experience all of these towns and river wonders.  After the tour we walked around town on our own, ate lunch at the Market Plaza, saw towers, walked over quaint bridges, took lots of pictures of half-timbered houses, went to Albrecht Durer's house, and lastly had Starbucks before we took the last bus back to the boat.  We heard another lecture from our Cruise Manager, who we like a lot, about locks and such on the Main-Danube canal.  All of the rivers in Europe have locks and dams- with many river barges moving cargo and lots of river cruise ships these days.  The canal really is an engineering marvel- three of the locks have 100 feet lifts.  

This canal was completed in 1992, but many of the river locks and dams were completed in the 1930s and then in the 1950s through 1970s as part of the after WWII reconstruction.  Do you want to see more of my lock and dam pictures?