Day 24 - Tue 23 Jun 15: Passau

June 22, 2015

0 km, 12-17deg, cloudy with the odd bit of drizzle, glimpses of the sun.

The last time Greg was here was 2009 on the way from Amsterdam to Vienna with his cycling buddy Graham Watson. It's much busier now with a lot more people and traffic, both on the river and the roads. Lucky for us we have bike paths, but today we are on foot.

Mick's phone started having issues yesterday so it was off to the phone shop first up this morning to try and resolve that. None of the three places we visited could help so we headed up to the Fortress Veste Oberhausen which was built in 1219 by the Passau Prince-Bishop in order to control traffic on the three rivers. Since then, Passau has played an important part in history. Judging by the cruise boats calling-in here nowadays it still attracts a lot of river traffic. The number of tourists on bikes and foot indicates that it's still pretty popular, regardless how they get here.

Next we came down the hill and, after a bite to eat (Maccas for Wendy and Nordsee (fresh seafood takeaway) for Greg, it was into St Stephen's Cathedral which houses the world’s largest organ; 17,974 pipes and 233 stops. The cathedral was built by the famous Italian baroque architect Carlo Lurago so it is OTT twice over. The Diocese Museum and Cathedral Treasury was also pretty special. Another wander through the narrow cobbled streets of the old town and the wide paved car-free streets of the new mall saw us back at our room for a rest. Well it is a "rest day".

Dinner was BYO everything in the corridor outside our room, which happened to be the last one on that wing of the hotel. There was a wide variety of food tonight, washed down with German beer and South African wine.