Well, it has been awhile since I blogged. I have a couple of reasons (okay, you might call them excuses!) Both center around me being old…I am tired and I hurt! As many of you know, we are on a six week journey and are heading into our last couple of days. Six weeks has gone incredibly quickly. Touring every day over that many days is exhausting! At night, I stumble to bed, mostly from exhaustion but some nights from too many cocktails during and after dinner! Usually the morning is busy with pre planned excursions and early breakfast. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing.

Anyway, I’m here now and want to tell you about all of our excursions to the Burgs- Regensburg, Nuremberg, Bamberg, Wurzburg, Miltenberg and my personal favourite of the burgs- Salzburg!

Day six through day ten on our river cruise took us through a series of what I now fondly call the Burgs, starting with Salzburg in Austria.

Salzburg was a dream come true for me! My kids will tell you that most of my life, I have been obsessed with the movie, The Sound of Music. They have been subjected to annual movie screenings and when they were young, we used to listen to and sing to the soundtrack even in the car! Many scenes from the film were shot in Salzburg! We saw the Pegasus fountain and the Mirabella Garden that Maria and the children can be seen singing around in the film. We saw the cemetery where the family hid from the Nazis in the movie. In the distance, I could see the Nonnberg Convent where Maris was a novice. The film is loosely based on the real Van Trapp family!

Salzburg is also famous for being the birthplace of Mozart.

We took a cable car ride to the Kuenburg Castle sitting high on the hill overlooking the city. The views were amazing!

After Salzburg, we journeyed on to Regensburg,Germany. This was an amazing, little, well preserved medieval city. It is unusual amongst other German cities as it hasn’t suffered much damage over its history so many beautiful and historically important, centuries old buidings are still standing.

The next day, we went to Nuremberg. A city full of important German history. Unfortunately, many of us know it because of its significance in WWII as this was the place that Hitler did his annual rallies. Nuremberg was mostly destroyed by allied bombings in WWII. Only 25 % of the old city remained after the war though it was rebuilt after the Nuremberg trials took place.

May 27th, brought us to Bamberg. I really enjoyed this little town. It’s windy uphill, narrow streets were so picturesque! There are streets that look like a little Venice, with water running through the town and a town hall built on the water as well.

Next we moved on to Wurzburg and the Bishops Residence. Wow! The frescoes and stucco work on this building were mindblowing! Words and pictures won’t do it justice. The white room below was done by one artist, using no molds and he completed it in 9 months!

We visited the last of the burgs on Monday – Miltenberg and also Wertheim. Miltenberg is a pretty little city is on the River Main. The architecture is stunning. We could have spent hours here roaming quaint streets or sitting in cafes sipping a coffee or having a beer, listening to street musicians. It is home to one of Germany’s oldest taverns- the blue building below.

We walked up to a castle ruin on the top of a hill overlooking the city. It was a beautiful, forested, walk and we were rewarded with a great view!

In Wertheim, we saw. Few houses that look like the house below. Back when these houses were built, owners were taxed on the ‘footprint’ of the house. They would buya small plot of land and build houses that were very tall. Sometimes, the second and third floor were bigger than the first floor! They only had to pay though on the space the house took up on the land. This was their early way of finding tax loopholes!

We are enjoying our river cruise and sadly it wraps up in the next couple of days. I will do another blog for our final few days! Suffice it to say, we are tired! We walk a lot each day and there is so much to see and learn. Sometimes we return to our cabin after an excursion and we just sit and relook at pictures and try to retain it all!

The cruise itself has been great – our cabin is comfortable, people are friendly and the food is good. River views from our panorama window are stunning, even in the middle of the night!