December 21 – Regensburg, Germany

We had two tour options…city tour and Christmas Market or just the Christmas Market.  Since Paul and Mary had toured Regensburg on their previous Danube River tour they opted to just do the Christmas market.  Everyone else went on the tour of the town (apparently they had a pretty bad guide…no one was happy with him). 

The Christmas market was held at the St. Emmeram Castle, home of the noble family of Thurn and Taxis. The grounds of the castle included a forest and large courtyard.  These gave a wonderful background for the market.

The palace, it's courtyard and the surrounding forest made for a very magical market.  This is probably the largest and most beautiful of the markets we have yet seen.  They bill it as the "most romantic".   

The market was spread out both outside the castle walls as well as in the courtyard.  There was lots to see. 

One of the most interesting items for sale - the Hahn's 1/2 meter long sausage (feuerwurst).  The buns were half the length of the sausage.  Most buyers had the sausage folded in half to fit in the sandwich.

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More Regensburg Christmas Market

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There were also a couple of adorable alpacas in their very fluffy winter coats.  Adorable.

Tara arranged for a special meal for the group.  She was hoping for Indian but the kitchen staff was limited to what they had available…so the dishes were more Indonesian.  We had a spicy soup, salad, and three dishes…beef, chicken and egg/potato.  It was all excellent. 

December 22 - Passau

Everyone in the group headed out for an all-day tour to Salzburg, Austria.  Except for us.  We had visited Salzburg with Mary’s mom a few years back and had spent several days there.  On our previous Danube River cruise we had also toured Passau so we decided to just do visit the Passau Christmas Market on our own. 

Photos of Passau.

It was very close to the river, so we ended up being out for only an hour or so.  The market was in the large square in front of St. Stephen’s Church. 

The market was pretty small.  We did buy some Christmas ornaments for all the grandchildren. 

And we had Chimney Cakes.  These originated in Transylvania.  They are long strips of yeast dough wrapped around something resembling a rolling pin.  The dough is then baked and then rolled in the topping of your choice.  We picked vanilla sugar.  The Chimney Cakes are crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.  And very yummy.

We had a light lunch in the lounge and spent quite a while
visiting with Fred from New Jersey. 

The afternoon was spent sailing to Linz.  The Salzburg tour will return to the boat there.  The cruise down this section of the Danube was beautiful in places.  But the weather wasn’t so great and we had some rain and a lot of fog/low lying clouds. 

We spent some time on photos and submitted a number of photos for the ship’s photo contest.  We will see how we do.  Categories are prettiest and funniest.