Main Danube Canal, Bamberg and Nurnberg

Saturday, we left the Danube river and entered the monumental main Danube canal, linking the North Sea to the Black Sea. We passed through a series of 16 locks. Today we had a engineer come on board to talk about the numerous locks and how they work.
We docked at 2pm and had a city tour organised, it was a wet and miserable day with light rain falling. Nurnberg is the 2nd largest city in the German state of Bravaria, with a population of 530,000. Historically merchants and craftsmen have made this a wealthy city.
Most of the city was completely destroyed during WW11 and the historical buildings we seen during our tour was mostly rebuilt, using the same stones.
Adolf Hitler chose this city as the site for his annual nazi party rallies.

 Marienkirche, Nurnberg most famous church

Walkway through the old town

Nurnberg castle

Walk way through old town.

Nurnberg Castle.

Settling Fields where the Nazi rallies took place.

Old stone bridge 

Rally grounds

Some snow at Nurnberg Castle..

After a cold and gloomy tour in Nurnberg  we had some free time, then back to boat in the evening for a pleasant evening.

The next day we arrived into Bamberg, we all departed for our city tour, this being our second visit in the last two weeks, it was nice revisiting Bamberg with a guide and getting some of the cities history..

Bamberg is a UNESCO world heritage site, from 1983.  It has a population of 70,000, of which 10% are students.Highlights of the city are the AltesRathaus (.oldcity hall), Little Venice and the Cathedral.

It also has nine breweries in town and 81 others in surrounding region, that produce over 200 different types of beers.

On our first visit two weeks ago we ate in the famous brewery restaurant and the boys sampled the Smokey beer, not a favourite.

Cathedral in Bamberg 

Famous stone bridge and house built on the side of the building 

The witches memorial, mostly men burnt at the stake, so that their wealth was seized.

Gingerbread house

Bamberg has over 40 churches and is a religious catholic town.

Little Venice.

The famous cathedral which depicts statues of Adam and Eve

Another view of the stone bridge and mounted house.

This concludes our tour and on return to the boat we had a glass blowing demonstration, Alex assisted and got to make his own glass baubles.I purchased a very unique piece. it will be shipped home.