We were asked to place our luggage outside our cabins before breakfast and to vacate our cabins before 9:30 a.m. so that the ship could be prepared for new passengers who would be arriving later today.

We only had a few hours to explore the town, so we set off straight after breakfast.

A couple who had visited here yesterday told us that we should cross the bridge to reach the old town. This seemed counter-intuitive as we seemed to be walking away from the cathedral. We soon realised that our instincts were correct and we back-tracked. It turned out that yesterday's visitors had arrived by coach and not by river (of course!) and they did indeed have to cross the river to get to the old town.

Regensburg was founded by Marcus Aurelius in 179 AD, but the Romans had a fort on the site as far back as 90 AD.

We realised that we hadn't walked across the famous Stone Bridge so that's where we headed next. It is a 12th-century bridge across the Danube and for more than 800 years (until the 1930s), it was the city's only bridge across the river. At 1017 feet long and with 16 curving arches, it is a masterpiece of medieval construction and an emblem of the city, but as it was in the process of being maintained and largely covered, we couldn't get a really good sense of its full glory.

We wondered how our ship could have sailed under the bridge, had we been sailing through the town, because it seemed far too low, and the arches too narrow to allow a ship of our size to pass. We found out later that we would have been diverted into a parallel canal outside the town if we were going to sail past.

Crossing back to the other side again, we strolled past the old 12th century sausage kitchen ("wurstkuche") on the edge of the river (but not stopping for one!) and back to the ship for an early lunch.

After lunch, the coaches arrived and we set off for our next scheduled port of call, Nuremberg. By road, the distance is about 112 kms and the drive took a little over an hour. Sadly, this meant that we missed being on a ship as it sailed out of the Danube River at Kelheim and into the start of the canal linking the Danube with the Main River (and effectively, the Black Sea with the North Sea). River ships could not sail all the way across Europe before the opening of the canal in 1992. Planning of the canal took 70 years, with another 32 to build it. The statistics are impressive:-

171 kilometres long, 4 metres deep, and 55 metres wide
it climbs over the 175 metre high continental divide
16 locks, 7 weirs, 3 steel channel bridges, 5 concrete channel bridges, 115 road, train, and pedestrian bridges
75 km of dams and 5 pumping stations
a $5.8 billion price tag

We enjoyed passing through the numerous locks on this voyage. The lock gates had various mechanisms for opening; some swung on hinges like a door, some raised up like a gate, and a few even swung out like a table top.

After an uneventful trip along the German motorway, we arrived in Nuremberg, Bavaria's second-largest city after Munich. We stopped to drop off some people from our group who had elected to visit the "Documentation Centre and Nazi Party Rallying Grounds". We had made a decision not to do this excursion, opting instead to do the guided tour of the city...

A statue of Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528), Nuremberg's famous painter, engraver, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist.

We were driven for what seemed like quite some distance from the city centre, towards the Main-Danube Canal. We arrived at about 6.00pm and were pleased to see our replacement ship, the Scenic Sapphire, waiting for us. We were given a warm welcome by the new staff and crew members. It seemed slightly odd to see a completely new set of faces on a ship which looked almost exactly the same as the one which we had left that morning in Regensburg. Our baggage was ready and waiting for us. We unpacked quickly and went to dinner. Shortly afterwards, we sailed. The transfer had been done seamlessly and we were back on schedule. Next stop Bamberg!