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We woke up to excitement
outside of our cabin window. They were in the process of taking out the old
life boat to be replaced with a new one. We had received notification that this
would happen, but didn’t realize we were going to have such a front row seat.
We watched the very intense process of how the old lifeboat was lowered off the
side of the ship. It makes one feel pretty good knowing it could really go
quite quickly and they did a very nice job. Dick was particularly fascinated
that in about one minute time the ship could deploy our lifeboat.
Today we headed
off on our final excursion of this trip: to the medieval city of Lubeck. This
city was another city of the Hanseatic League. Actually, it was known as the
Queen of the Hanseatic. This medieval city had a strategic location where
everyone either as they went through the Baltic Sea or had some other goods
being delivered up to the Baltic had to pay tax to Lubeck.
We drove on the
autobahn, but dealt with lots of construction and traffic. No one was really
speeding today. It was about a 90-minute drive to reach the town of Lubeck.
There our local guide, Stephanie, met our bus and gave us a very nice tour.
Stephanie‘s grandparents arrived in Lubeck as refugees at the end of World War
II coming from Poland. She was able to give us some nice local perspectives on
the area. We talked more about the Hanseatic League and what it meant to the
area. This was another very old city with many buildings built in the 1300’s
and 1400’s. There were wonderful cathedrals and churches and City Hall
buildings. We walked and talked throughout the morning.
A unique feature
that we had a chance to take a peek at was some of the alley ways that had
originally been built as open squares in the middle of blocks, but later were
filled in with small cottages and other dwellings. We had a chance to look into
on a couple and go inside and walk around on the third. Very charming. However,
we’ve been getting a chance to hear about a challenge all of these places are
UNESCO heritage site buildings and so have lots and lots of rules about how one
is allowed to remodel or take care of them.
An interesting stop for us was one of the oldest hospitals in Europe. It was started around the 15th century by the the Catholic Church to help reduce the suffering from the many diseases. Many people spent the last years of their lives in small cubicles in the back of the building.
Following many
beautiful views of buildings, we had time for tea and cake at a local bakery
that is famous around the world for its marzipan. We arrived with our group of
40 at the same time as another tour group of 40 and the place was already
crowded. So, chaos ensued. Eventually, we got the classic marzipan cake. Which
was delicious! We also had a chance to look around at all the different cakes
and marzipan candies made in many fanciful shapes.
We had a short
amount of time for some free time looking around. We enjoyed looking at the
local farmers market, and then had a chance to listen to an organ grinder and find a camera shop to get a new
lens cap for Dick’s camera. We didn’t do any power shopping, but we’re really
intrigued at the different shops and buildings throughout the area.
We ended with a little bit more walking around and hearing more about the City Hall and had a
chance to see a model of the city at its prime. Most of the city survived the
bombing of World War II, although there were some buildings that had been
destroyed and were replaced by nondescript boring modern buildings in the
1950’s.
We ended the
tour at a famous gate. This gate was one of the only remaining parts of
the world walled city from the middle ages. It is said that the structure leans
at a similar percentage to that of the Leaning Tower of pizza. This gate used
to be for many years on the 50-mark German bill so many people around the country
know the gate. Then, it was time to hop on the bus and head back to the ship.
Some little sprinkles of rain while we were driving, but again we managed to
have nearly perfect weather.
Back to the ship
for a good seafood dinner and getting ready for tomorrow and the last night
about board our ship.
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