Travel Log - Regensburg, Germany

Regensburg (according to my handy ship info paper that they delivered every day) is the oldest city on the Danube and so it seems fitting that they also have the oldest restaurant in the world (that part I looked up on Wikipedia to see if it's a truth or just boastful talk haha!) called the "Historische Wurstküche zu Regensburg"  ("Historic Sausage Kitchen of Regensburg").

Historic Sausage Kitchen. This building has been
 here since at least the 17th century.

The menu is in German so it was sort of a crap shoot figuring out what to get, we struggled for a bit before the very nice waitress who spoke pretty decent English came to our rescue.  I ordered the potato soup and was given the choice to add sausage links to the soup if I wished. Sausage links in my soup? Well why not since we were at the historic sausage kitchen after all. I loved it -  seriously the food on this trip has been amazing, not a bad meal anywhere! They have tons of choices of sausages obviously, these were small finger-sized so having 2 in the soup wasn't crazy or inappropriate (haha!). Side story - apparently someone somewhere sometime (seems I might not have been paying enough attention to a boring tour guide) regulated that these sausages had to be a certain weight and small size; Sunday Mass was 5 to 6 hours long so people were hungry when they got done but they weren't supposed to eat meat so someone somewhere came up with the idea to make these small sausages finger size and thin so they could slip them thru keyholes in the door, that way no one knew they were eating the sausages. What can I say people, it's not my story - I'm just passing on the medieval gossip (or the parts I remember anyway) ;).

a sample of the menu, thankfully we had some help translating. potato soup is the first thing listed...

...and it's delicious!

After lunch we took a tour to the Danube Narrows and the Weltenburg Abbey. Unfortunately we had to travel to the Narrows (the river cuts thru the mountains and literally is at it's narrowest here, the long ship can't go thru - we got on a small ferry boat to see that part of the river) by bus (ugh) so our (lame) tour guide held us captive and took us by the Befreiungshalle (means "hall of liberation") a large domed building built to commemorate Bavaria's victory over Napoleon - it's being refurbished (which is very common everywhere we went on this trip - scaffolding is ever present) so you couldn't actually go in it and it wasn't even part of the tour but since we drove out of the way to see it (or not see it) then we didn't have enough time at the Abbey to try the beer that is famous world round because the monks make it right there and have won all kinds of awards for it. This is why I say the guide was lame LOL. I don't like beer so really it didn't matter to me but I'm being indignant on behalf of everyone on the bus who wanted to drink it (ahem, Dave) hahahah. Enough with the history info - back to the cruise...

Liberation Hall - see what I mean? 

so we did what anyone would do when standing in front of a giant domed building
looking over amazing views of the city behind us - took a group selfie of course. 

our bus shows the route we were taking on the Danube, Dave is pointing at where
we were on the map - Budapest is the dot above the naked woman's head.
don't ask why there is a naked woman taking a shower on the side of the bus.
no one has the answer. 

notice anything wrong with this picture haha? I don't know if it's a typo or how they spell "drink" there!

 rock formations on the Danube Narrows remind me of an Alaskan glacier

stained glass windows at St. Peter's Cathedral installed in the 14th century!

That night on board the chefs prepared a "Taste of Germany" - different sausages (naturally), spreads, pretzels and bread, along with tons of other stuff. Yum. I'm really starting to wonder when I'll be hungry again after this cruise - I'm full all the time! But it's so good! Afterwards there was more singing and dancing, and a mean card game of 31- we "bet" with yucky wasabi peas and at first we thought the loser should have to eat the pot of peas but since I lost first and wasn't about to eat them we changed that rule. 

"taste of Germany"

don't let the smiles fool you -  they're ruthless.

how could I possibly lose since I had the "stopper"?