We sailed all morning which made for a nice, relaxing time. We went through the Lock of Gabcikovo which is about the only lock we did during the day and it was a big lock. After we docked, we went on the included excursion.
Our tour there was the Bratislava’s Christmas Markets and an organ concert at the Gothic St. Martin’s Cathedral. The Cathedral is one of the largest and oldest churches in Bratislava, known especially for being the coronation church of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1563 and 1830. The concert was a woman playing the organ who was very good playing several pieces and Christmas carols. Her husband sang the Christmas carols accompanied by his wife on the organ. It was a good concert and we really enjoyed it. We also enjoyed the church because it was warm inside! It was cold outside.
There are lots of places for food. Apparently a lot of people use the market for supper. Lots and lots of people and lots and lots of places to buy great looking food. Too bad we were not hungry!! Some of the food looked great. We did have gluhwein, of course. Mike had some great hot chocolate also. There was mostly food in markets and not a lot of stalls selling Christmas things. I wonder if this might have been that this is the first year the Christmas Markets have been open since COVID first shut them down. I would think I lots of places that had them in the past just didn’t have the supplies to have a nice market or maybe they were unsure if they would be open this year. Last year they shut them down late in the year and there was some uncertainty if they would open this year.
In the roads of the town there are grooves in middle of stone. They were built this way and filled with rough rocks to keep horse hooves from slipping taking items to market.
After we got back to the ship, we did a tour of the ship’s bridge. The first mate did the discussion since the captain only speaks German. Sometimes there is only a 3-7 cm clearance under a bridge with the ship’s bridge down to the slit to see out of. There are 13 locks from Budapest to Passau and 167 locks from Passau to Amsterdam. The ship can go under a bridge with 7 cm clearance below the boat to bottom of river. The wheel house is down for 4 days going from Passau to Amsterdam for bridges