Regensburg (Oct 14)

No sailing today.  We are docked at the little town of Vilshofen on the Danube (the second largest river in Europe, now headed downstream toward the Black Sea), and we took a 1.5 hour bus ride to yet another medieval city, Regensburg.  This was the second largest city in Germany at one time (after Cologne), important because of it having one of the only bridges across the Danube big enough to handle large loads, making it a commercial hub and a very wealthy city.  The tour guide said they are currently cleaning the stone bridge with "laser technology" for something like $30 million.  No wonder they don't clean all the cathedrals that we've been seeing.

The Romans had a large fort here back in the 2nd century, here is one of the 4 portals into the fort, followed by a picture of what it may have looked like back then

Our tour guide was a cute graduate student (Regensburg has a university) born in Albania, moved to Italy, and finally to Regensburg

Here she is again in front of some measuring irons on a wall.  Back then, certain "imperial cities" (cities answering only to the emperor and no intermediate beauracracy) had their own measuring systems, and these were posted to establish the official length of a foot, an arm, and a fathom for that city...we saw similar irons in Rothenburg. 

The city contained a wide mixture of architectures, from Romanesque to Renaissance to Gothic, sometimes all on the same building. The tallest towers in the city back in medieval times belonged to "patricians", who were wealthy merchants, and since there is limited space in the city they built their houses vertically into towers to show their wealth

We had a nice lunch of salad, sausages, sauerkraut, and beer (the sweet mustard for the sausages was amazing!)

had some free time to walk around the downtown shopping area, then toured the Thurn and Taxis Palace, which was originally a monastery.  When that was shut down, it was awarded to the family that was a key player in setting up the postal service in the 16th century.  It was very beautiful inside, reminded me somewhat of Versailles on a much smaller scale in regards to regality of the ballroom, dining room, etc.  No pictures were allowed inside, sorry.  Here is the courtyard outside the palace

We visited the huge cathedral

which has the largest free-hanging pipe organ in the world

Another 1.5 hour bus ride, and back on the ship.  Tomorrow we visit Passau.