Shortly after breakfast, the ship docks at Rüdesheim. By 9 am we are on board a mini motorized "train" that drops us off at the town's signature attraction: Siegfried's Music Cabinet. This museum is devoted to mechanical musical instruments and it's one of the largest such collections in the world. The collection and the museum resulted from the singular vision and passion of one Siegfried Wendel, who travelled the world collecting self-playing instruments and painstakingly restored them to working order. Our guide takes us through dozens of rooms, each filled with a variety of pianos, "orchestrions" and other contraptions that play by themselves. Most are wind-up instruments. Many of them use some type of perforated paper rolls to dictate the notes to play. Most are ornately carved and some feature mechanical figures that move in time ... read more

We get to sleep in this morning, which is nice. Around noon, the Scenic Ruby arrives in Wurstburg. We have elected to take a day trip to nearby Rothenberg. It's about a 1 1/2 hours on the bus. Our guide, Monica, springs an endless stream of stories and facts about our destination. Rothenberg is one of the luckiest towns in Germany. In the Middle Ages it was spared the plague of the Black Death through prayer (or perhaps isolation). It was rescued from total destruction at the hands of the conquering Catholics in 1631 when the mayor wagered the city's safety against his ability to drink 7 pints of wine in one go—and won. It was bombed once during WWII (and sustained some damage) but a second sortie the next day had to be scrubbed due ... read more

This morning is spent on the Main-Danube Canal. This constructed waterway will take us over the continental divide and back down to the Main River on the other side. Consequently, there are serious locks to traverse as the ship is lifted higher and higher. We arrive in Nuremberg around 1:30 pm. We have selected yet another walking tour of the city. The alternative is a tour focused on World War II, including a visit to the city's WWII documentation centre, but that will be for another time. Nuremberg has been an important cultural and political centre in Germany for centuries. It is the birthplace of Albrecht Dürer and the setting of Wagner's Die Meistersinger. German kings from the 14th century onward traditionally held their diets here, and for over 300 years it was the keeper of ... read more

Another early morning. Our ship is now moored at Brandstatt, near Linz. We are off on a full-day excursion to Salzburg. It's a two-hour ride. Our guide, Eva, is extremely entertaining and makes the time fly by. Both sides of the road are lined by vegetable farms. Crops include corn (fodder for animals, not humans), beets and sugar beets, potatoes, wheat, barley, canola, and, of course, lots of vinyards. I am struck by the large number of solar panels on the roofs of private homes. The terrain becomes increasingly hilly and then mountainous as we press into the interior. At a rest stop along the way, we are tempted by mouth-watering baked goods and treated to a beautiful vista of a lake nestled among mountains. Salzburg derives its name from the fact that salt used to ... read more

Up early for a bus tour of Vienna, culminating in a visit to the Schönbrunn Palace. The bus takes us through the centre of the old city, then circumnavigates the core on the ring road, which follows the path of the old city walls. An interesting aspect of the ring road is that it has a centre lane originally for carriages and now used by motor vehicles, a second lane originally for riders on horseback and now used by bicycles, and a third outside lane for pedestrians. Vienna is absolutely gorgeous. Our guide has us looking left and right, left and right as wonderful buildings, each worthy of hours of inspection, file by on either side faster than one can keep track them. I have to admit that I am surprised by the prevelance of graffiti ... read more