20191030 Wednesday, Transfer from Prague to Passau
We got to sleep in a little this morning, but with our biological clocks messed up, we chose to be up with the sun to make the most of the daylight. We found blue sky and scattered puffy clouds greeting us this morning. The weather has cooled off, with temperatures forecast to be in the mid 40’s today. We repacked our suitcases and had our last Hilton Prague breakfast. We sat at a two top next to a 4 top that was against the wall. Shortly after our coffee and tea arrived, a young professional woman sat on the 4 top against the wall. Then, as we started into our food, we soon found ourselves surrounded by a whole flock of young professional women cheerfully greeting each other with hugs and chatter. We soon found out that they were all staying at the Hilton to attend a training seminar for their company which produces heart valves. These gals were perfectly suited to medical sales and marketing.
We checked out of the hotel, and had a a couple of hours to kill before boarding our transfer bus to Passau to embark on our river cruise ship, so we headed out for a walk, and found ourselves in the heart of Old Town Prague.
This time we were able to watch the Astronomical Clock ring in the 11 o’clock hour with it’s parade of the 12 Apostles in the two windows flanking the clock face. Actually, the Apostles make more of cameo appearances at the windows, rather than a parade. A skeleton representing death is below the windows ringing the bell as each Apostle looks out his window. We also were able to walk out to the river bank upstream from the Charles Bridge, across from where we had seen the swans yesterday, and found a great view of the Prague Castle hill and the Charles Bridge.
We had gone back to the Gate restaurant where we had hoped to have some traditional Czech food for lunch, but learned that there was no way we would be able to get our meals in time before we had to board our transfer bus, so we visited the American Embassy (Mc Donalds) for a quick bite before boarding our transfer bus.
As we headed out of Prague, we saw their horse racing track on the outskirts of town. Beyond that, the countryside is covered by large agricultural fields and forests. We passed several ponds, used for raising carp, which are served as the traditional meal for Christmas in the Czech Republic. We learned that there is usually a spike in emergency room visits on Christmas Day because of people with fish bones stuck in their throats since the only time most people eat carp is on Christmas. Pavel, our guide to Kutna Hora yesterday told us that people buy the carp live and keep them in their bath tubs until just before it is time to prepare the fish because otherwise it stinks up the kitchen quickly. He then floated the scenario of a man’s daughter becoming distraught at the idea of him killing the fish for Christmas dinner because she had bonded with it during it’s brief stay in the family’s bathtub. That could have been the inspiration for the movie “The Shape of Water”.
We did pass through a small mountain pass on the way to Passau as we passed from the Czech Republic into Germany. There were several chalets and a tiny ski area with a single chair lift. We made one stop at a gas station with free modern bathrooms and a large convenience store.
As we descended into Passau, we discovered that the city is a lot bigger than what we remembered it to be from our last visit. During our first Danube River cruise in 2015, we visited Passau as we went from Budapest to Nuremberg. We did the walking tour of the historical downtown, but driving in today from the Czech Republic, we could see that the historical downtown is actually surrounded by quite a large modern city. The ship was actually docked in a side channel to the Danube that appears to have been created specifically for river cruise boat embarkation and disembarkation operations. This location is a little ways upstream from the historical downtown district. Apparently, the boat will be repositioned before tomorrow morning so that it is tied up at the historical downtown waterfront.
The Vilhjalm (pronounced William) is a sister Viking Longship to the Atla, which we were on in 2015. We are in a veranda room, which has a small balcony, just wide enough for two small chairs to fit on. The room is a bit tighter than our usual Princess balcony staterooms and has less storage space, but we had enough drawers, shelves and closet space to unpack everything we will need for this leg of our journey. There is no need for swim suits or workout clothes and shoes since there is no pool or gym. We’ll be getting our exercise walking in each port of call. So some of what we packed stayed in the suitcases under the beds.
There was a welcome briefing in the lounge. It’s a good thing we have been on a prior Viking River cruise because there was a loud group of people at the bar that made it impossible to hear what was being said from where we were sitting. Those people were probably raised by wolves.
At dinner, we sat with a couple from Milwaukee who were on their very first cruise, and an elegant older couple from Nova Scotia, who were long time cruise veterans. This is their 5th Viking river cruise. They had also done one Viking Ocean cruise on the Baltic recently. Prior to that, they had cruised on Princess and Celebrity, but were pleased with the smaller ship size that Viking Ocean offered. The Milwaukee couple had an unusual story in that the husband had married the his wife’s college roomate as his second wife. We’ll have to see if he ends up working his way up and down the dormitory hallway as time passes. Janet ordered Norwegian salmon, which appeared to be farmed Atlantic salmon, while Ben ordered the local cuisine menu which featured pork with cabbage and potato. The port was basically ham steaks.
Perhaps we are still fighting through jet lag, but we could barely stay awake as we got through our desserts of creme brûlée and Bavarian cake, so we turned in right after dinner. The only scheduled entertainment for after dinner was the piano bar.
