An early start as we are disgorged a few miles out of Würzberg, and bussed the last few miles so that we miss the queue for the locks. Our guide used the time to explain the significant facts of the city - three stand out: religious reformation in C11, religious megalomania in C18 and of course, Second World War.
Starting with the first, three monks turned up in town and decided to convert them all to Catholicism. The prime mover was called Kilian, and today happened to be last day of St Kilian's Feast so there was lots of events going on, one of which was the ability to take a peak at his coffin, which had been paraded around the town a couple of days ago.
It was striking just how many churches are dotted around town, especially at midday! We enjoyed a huge variety of architectures, from said C11 (not much remaining) through every other century. The Cathederal of St Kilian was particularly interesting, not least because it was huge with a cloisters, crypt and lots of interesting chapels.
Moving on, the Residenzia is an amazing palace built by the Prince Bishops, a curious position whereby the Emporer conveyed a Princeship on the elected Bishop. The palace was built to rival Versailles and in many ways it does, an enormous staircase occupies 5400 sq ft (more than an acre) with the single largest ceiling fresco in the world, and this leads to room after room of opulent excess. Sadly it was forbidden to take photographs, but we sneaked a few in the chapel which will give an idea of the magnificence. Sadly only a few of the rooms were original but the remainder had been faithfully recreated, in some cases taking many years of painstaking work.
The final event of significance was the blitzkrieg we unleashed on the night of 16 March 1945, 472 planes dropped over 300,000 incendiary bombs, effectively destroying everything, although lots of buildings remained standing they were gutted. Many of the churches suffered some damage but remained standing, and at the palace, both wings were burned but the central section and staircase survived, thankfully.
We had to try a bratwurst in town at the stall our guide recommended - it was lovely!
Other noteworthy places were the lovely market square, old and new Rathauses (town halls) and a C15 stone bridge decorated with the statues of saints. We walked over the bridge and then headed uphill to the C11 Marienberg Fortress but didn't have time to go inside, as our sailing time was getting near.
We were moored one deep, so had to cross the top-deck of another boat then enter onto our otherwise flattened sun-deck, and drop down to reception to swipe in - except the swipe did a double so when it was time to do a cabin-check I got told off for not being here! How embarrassing?
As we set sail, we grabbed a bit more lunch and settled on the stern of the ship in a small area with about 18 tables. Our antipodean cousins kept us amused with their forte antics, including alcohol-fuelled singing and conversations I just can't bring myself to repeat here.
We then went for our regulation swim, the pool was much warmer today, and showered and dressed for dinner. As usual dinner was OK but not stunning. I've been mulling over how best to report this fairly, and my conclusion is to say that the food ranges from 3.5 stars to 4.0 stars. The service is from 4.0 to 4.5. So neither is terrible but there's room for improvement.
Am I being unreasonable? I don't know because I have no idea what the other boats are like. I know we paid a fair bit but again is it enough? On the flip side our room, whilst small, is great, and we have all the trappings of the highest grade, such as breakfasts on our balcony, canapés, laundry/dry cleaning and so on. The weakest link in my opinion is the food, closely followed by the lack of variation - by which I mean the expectation we are required to be at dinner for 19:00, and other restrictive rules.
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