Where to begin?

It seems as if our family has been on the go-go-go lately and now that we're finally home to stay for a while since school starts in two weeks, I'm not sure where to resume blogging.  Danube cruise?  Olympic diving?  Our week in Ireland and Scotland?  I guess it's probably best to go back further in time because Lord knows with every passing day I'm more likely to forget what the heck happened.  So back, it is, to the Danube river cruise in July.

We continued our cruise through Germany with a brief tour of Passau.  Below are two pics of the town's rathaus, or town hall.  I always love it when they include scenes on the side of buildings.

I saw some more of the figures on the corners of buildings and snapped pics of them.  I find them really intriguing because they're not something you see everyday.

We walked through the old city center, up the hill to St. Stephan's Cathedral built in the late 1600s.  Below you see the husband standing in front of the tallest church door as his backdrop.  The facade was nice, but not particularly impressive.

However, the interior of the dom (church) was beautifully decorated.  And I loved the fact that the walls were painted white so it was really bright and easy to see all of the detail.

I just had to include a pic of the pipes because this is home to the largest cathedral organ in the world.

Behind the cathedral was a courtyard with a decorative well.  These seem to be rather commonplace in the German towns we toured and I just loved to stumble upon them.

One final thing I found interesting in Passau were the tombstones and plaques placed on the walls of the courtyard outside the cathedral.  I assume at one time there was a cemetery surrounding the church and they were placed here on the walls at some later date.  Some remembrances were rather plain while others were ornate works of funerary art.  And I do love a good piece of funerary art.

Back on board the Viking longship, they finally set up the entire sundeck since we had gone past our final low bridge and covered lock.  That is where we spent happy hour - enjoying a view of the Danube.  At dinner that evening, we met a lively couple from Calgary who own a cattle ranch.  Their stock and trade is selling cattle sperm, eggs and embryos - not exactly polite table conversation, but it didn't bother downhome Texas folk like us.