OK, I have ta admit…I’m getting a bit bored with the daily posts about this trip…it’s a day of looking at the market place and the local cathedral and then rinse and repeat. So…I’m going to compress the last 5 days into posts. The first covers Würzburg, Wertheim, and Koblenz…all in Germany and the next one will cover Cologne, Germany and Kinderdijk, The Netherlands. I’m sure ya’ll are getting bored with the almost the same posts so I’ll try and move on with a little something different as they say.

In the meantime what’s been going on down these parts. The weather is cooling off and we’re able to be open and get fresh air for a few days then it’s back into A/C then open and again…rinse and repeat. 

It’s actually been a pretty busy time for us. We headed over to the east coast to visit Connie’s mom and dad in the cemetery and have dinner with our friend Pat from college days at the University of Miami…got our flu shots…did a whole passle of Ladies of Elks stuff, and then last week had a really busy week. She had practice for her concert with the Fort Myers Symphonic Mastersingers, we had a Florida Philharmonic luncheon and concert (since we’re premier members which means we donated some bucks), had a Sarasota Symphony concert featuring Gil Shahan doing the Beethoven Violin Concerto (and we should have left at halftime and skipped the Prokofiev Symphony but Connie didn’t tell him she was done quick enough, then her concert on Sunday. And tonight she’s off again for rehearsal for her next concert in December, it is the Christmas Concert with the new this year Fort Myers Philharmonic . 

Later this week we’re off to the Elks Midyear Conference then another Florida Philharmonic concert and then on the 20th Neil and Connie will have their 50th wedding anniversary and they’re looking forward to a nice dinner out for that.

Ok, on to the Viking cruise. Some of the photos are of the castles on the Middle Rhine and while we have some brochures that identify them I won’t bore you with all the details on every castle but will just give you some highlight tips as seems appropriate. And I won’t really differentiate between the three cities in this post unless there is a reason to do so. Suffice it to say that the days were pretty similar with tours and such along with excellent dinners on board the ship.

The bishop’s residence…seems sorta gaudy to me but what do I know.

This is a combo of a fresco on the ceiling combined with some plaster sculptures that blend into the painting so you can’t easily tell what is paint and what is three dimensional.

The bed Napoleon slept in…several times.

It is just an inlaid wood floor but the craftsmanship here is extraordinary.

A sign outside a blacksmith shop.

Another doorway near the river with notations on how high the flooding was.

And even higher flood levels here.

The blue in this paint is due to finely ground glass being mixed into the paint…one of three buildings in Germany that remain with this scheme.

This is the Lorelei statue which was placed in the 1980s.

This church deserves special mention. It is named Villa Klosterschenke in the district of Ehrenthal. Its claim to fame is that although it is a church the priest was also the owner of the local tavern and the only way to enter the church was to go through the tavern which is named the Monastery Tavern. The tavern is to the right and the church to the left.

King Leopold statue in Koblenz. Unfortunately there was some sort of festival going on and we were not able to get around the front for a picture…tut the horse and Leopold are probably 50 feet tall plus the base.

The interior of the Basilica of Saint Castor in Koblenz…while we were there we got to listen in on some of the choir practicing. So lovely and really sounded excellent in the acoustics of the stone cathedral even though there were only 5 singers.

Please let me know in the comments whether this more abbreviated post is more interesting than the several almost the same posts except for the images. I kinda like this better but who knows?

Interesting things found on the net.

Redneck bidet.

On one of the photo forums Neil is on a member posted this as his 50,000th post.

Cyas.