Our next port of call was Linz, Austria. From there we took a bus to Cesky Krumlov, a small town by the Vltava River in the Czech Republic. It was a feudal town founded in the Middle Ages. It attracts tourists because of the Cesky Krumlov Castle complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The first castle was established before 1250 by the Lords of Krumlov. This family line died off in 1302. Other families that followed included the Rosenbergs, who…
The day following the Passion Play, we travelled to Vilshofen, Germany to board our ship. On the way, we stopped for lunch in Landshut. It was founded in 1204 when the Duke of Bavaria built a fortress here. Today it is the capital of Lower Bavaria. These pictures are of the Gasthaus Zur Schleuse’s beer garden where we had our lunch and a view along the Isar River, just across the street from the restaurant. Our first port of call…
We visited Oberammergau in 2015 as part of our Alps and Dolomites tour. We were able to tour the Passion Play theatre, but of course there wasn’t a play that year. We booked our Blue Danube tour with Oberammergau in 2018 and now – in 2022 – it was finally going to happen. The play has a several hundred year history. In the 1600s, the Thirty Years War was raging in Europe. As the war moved into Germany, the bubonic…
We drove through the Bavarian countryside on our way to Ettal and Oberammergau. We stayed in Ettal, only ten minutes from Oberammergau. From our hotel grounds, we could see Ettal Abbey. It was founded in 1330 by Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria and is still a working monastery today. The current building was constructed after a fire destroyed the previous abbey in 1744. I have included pictures of the Basilica and the Abbey complex. Ettal Abbey is more than just its…
After almost 2 1/2 years of not being able to travel because of the Covid 19 pandemic, we were finally embarking on our Blue Danube with Oberammergau tour. We flew into Munich, arriving a day before our tour began so we had time to do some exploring on our own. We had been to Munich when we took the Alps and Dolomites tour in 2015 and had seen the Residenz Museum from the outside, but had never been inside to…