Passau (10th June)

Today is the last full day of our cruise.

At around 9am we sailed into Passau. Passau is built at the confluence of 3 rivers: the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz.  It's certainly a very pretty city. Once again full of narrow cobbled streets and baroque churches.

We had a walking tour of the city with our hilarious guide, Alex.  Being situated as it is around 3 rivers, Passau is subject to flooding at regular intervals - the last bad flood being in 2013. The height of the flood water is marked on the side of the town hall, and Alex helpfully stood under the markings so you can get a sense of scale of just how high the flood water reached.

 After our tour we were treated to an organ concert in St Stephen's Cathedral - which has the largest church organ in the world.  Then it was off to lunch.  Can't go to Bavaria and not have a beer.  We had  schnitzel and the local bier: Innstadt.  After that a bit of shopping and back to the ship for a lazy afternoon lounging on the sun deck.

It being the final night of the cruise we had the Captain's cocktail party and farewell gala dinner. Unfortunately, after pigging out at lunch I couldn't eat much of the 6 course meal they served up. I will definitely need to go on a diet when I get home.

So that is it - the end of our cruise.  I must admit this trip surprised me.  I expected the Hungarian and Slovakian stops to be cities full of concrete tower blocks, and I expected many of the towns and cities in Austria and Germany to be industrial.  Instead I've been treated to a series of fairy-tale towns and villages in Austria/Germany and beautiful historic cities in Budapest, Brastislava and Vienna.
Having traveled around Europe by coach, train and car before now, I'd say a river cruise is definitely the way to do it - so relaxing.