Well, continuing on the coverage of our river cruise.

In the week since my last post Connie’s been pretty busy. Our church organist was up in NYC this weekend for the baptism of his 3rd grandchild…the father and grandfather live here in North Fort Myers but they decided to do the deed up where the rest of the family is. So…she did all 3 masses this past weekend…Saturday afternoon and both on Sunday morning. She actually got to be the cantor for the full mass instead of just the psalmist which is typical as her choir director wants everything to be the Joe show so he does the announcing of the hymns and everything but the psalm between the first and second readings. Then on Sunday she had the Ladies of Elks Breast Cancer Extravaganza so she headed off right after the 1000 Mass. Neil stayed and changed the hymn numbers on the boards for next weekend before heading home.

It’s supposed to be cooler this week as a cold front came through…so overnight lows will be in the 60s which will make the bike rides a lot more comfortable.

Neil ordered a new camp stove for the lanai cooking setup…the old one is over 4 years old and is past its use by date so it is time for a new one. He also ordered and received the cold weather gear he needs for his Yellowstone National Park winter workshop after New Years…waterproof insulated boots, snow pants, Merino wool thermal underwear, waterproof gloves. He hated to buy new gear for a single trip he will likely only use one time but it was way cheaper than the workshop and first class airfare total. He and Connie tried checking at Goodwill to see if there was anything that would work with no luck…there was some winter gear but it was designed for 40 degrees, not 0 so he had to get some new stuff.

This week we have a composers luncheon to go to. There is a new small symphony orchestra (Florida Philharmonic) which started last season and performs just 10 miles from our house. We donated $1,000 to them to become Premier members…that means 2 tickets to each concert and tickets to 6 composers luncheon the week or two before. All of that costs about 600 bucks so the extra just gets them preferred seating. We like the music they do and it’s close to home so it’s a good deal for us. We also got our season tickets for the Sarasota Symphony and tickets to Artist Naples and the Fort Myers Community Concert series so we’re pretty well booked up for classical music this season.

Ok, on to the river cruise. Neil had to do some document lining up of several notes we had taken, the planned itinerary, and the dates on the photos but as it turned out we skipped doing anything during the stop in Regensburg Germany for a couple of reasons. First off…it was brutally hot that day and neither Connie nor Neil felt very well. The only thing on the schedule for the day was the walking tour but it was just another market and cathedral thing…and due to being moored way out in the industrial section of the port it was a mile just to get to the bus to go to the tour…so they elected to just stay onboard and relax as it was about halfway through the cruise and they needed a day off. That evening they departed for Nuremberg Germany and had both a driving and walking tour through the city including the old original part of the city still surrounded by the city walls.

Nuremberg was pretty heavily bombed during WWII so most of the construction in the images is new after the war, I’ll point out what is still original as we go along.

This is a photo taken from the castle in the old city after the war to show the extent of the destruction.

Entering the castle…this was mostly spared from the bombing.

After entering one takes a 90 degree right turn and then head uphill, this was taken looking back down the incline. Many castles were built with this twisted entry way to make it easier to fend off invaders.

The castle tower…this was again undamaged and according to the tour guides was deliberately not targeted as Allied bombers used it for a navigation point. Knowing the bombing accuracy during the war and considering it was saturation bomb raids…the fact that the castle was undamaged was more luck than anything else.

Views from just to the right of the tower…most of this is new after the war except for the churches which were damaged but not destroyed.

This is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady)…it was damaged during the bombing but not destroyed.

Interior…as you can see there are 2 pretty nice organs.

After this we caught the bus back to the boat and headed off in the evening for the next stop in Bamburg.

Interesting things found on the net.

There’s this bird in Indonesia named the Blue Fronted Lorikeet…it’s in the parakeet family. It’s pretty rare, seen in 1920, 2014, and this year via a trip where they spent 20something days looking for it. While we can appreciate looking for a rare species…I really think that it should have been named the Green Fronted Lorikeet cuz I don’t see a speck of blue on that bird, whaddya think? This picture comes from the webpage about the trip at petapixel.com.

Photographers going the extra mile.

Only those readers of a certain age will appreciate these two.

For those of you who just said “Huh?”…this is Alice Kramden from the 1950 TV series “The Honeymooners”. Her husband Ralph was played by Jackie Gleason and he frequently waved his fist at her and threatened “to send her to the moon”. Alice’s deadpan character was played by Audrey Meadows, the sister of the more famous Jayne Meadows.

Cyas.