Boomsmas in Europe 8

It's Christmas every day in Rothenburg Germany: it was an hour's bus journey from our mooring at Wurzburg to get there on the Romantic Road, in this case Romantic = winding. Before the winding bit were very interesting farm lands with patchwork fields of wheat, canola, sugar beets, sunflowers and maize. Recent storms had flattened some of the wheat.  Fascinating fields of solar panels, privately-owned investment properties selling energy back to the grid for ordinary people's superannuation. 

Funniest sight of the tour: on arrival in Rothenburg the guide suggested we use the WC, so clutching our 50 cent pieces we lined up ready to deposit them in the turnstile (free pees are hard to find in Europe.) But the turnstile was jammed so there was the hilarious spectacle of 40 elderly tourists on hands and knees crawling under it to get to the loos. 

My favourite photo of the day - the Main Street of Rothenburg. 

At Rothenburg our guide led us slowly through the old town (we only visit old towns) with tasting stops along the way for chocolate, sausage and snowballs.

Sausages: delicious!

Snowballs: like a very sweet rock bun/biscuit dusted in icing sugar. No. They are the large white balls in the middle of the photo. They make 300 different breads in Bavaria (hence all the wheat fields) and I'd sooner have had bread. The ship does excellent bread. 

This church has quirky windows in its roof, looking like eyes:

The Christmas Shop here is world famous and we were warned it takes 20 minutes to go round at a fast trot not buying anything - which David proved. We split up as I had some serious shopping which I managed to achieve, taking a lot longer as there is so much to see. 

We returned to the ship via Autobahn 7 - quite sedately - with cars whizzing by at very fast rates as there is no speed limit. 

This afternoon's treat in the lounge was Ann, a young violinist who played a terrific programme:

A further treat: I was invited to play bridge before dinner. I chose Angie from Millicent as my partner - good choice because we creamed the opponents. Must say I enjoyed it enormously, probably won't be asked again due to ill-concealed glee.  High five Angie!