Vilshofen - with a day trip to Passau

In the morning after breakfast Ursula took us to see Passau from a lookout, one which we had been to on our last visit to Vilshofen.

Passau is quite close to Vilshofen, and the Danube flows through it, meets the Ils and the Inn rivers and then flows on to Austria. It is quite lovely.

The lookout was at the Vesta Oberhaus, a 13th century fortress which gives a great view of Passau.

In the foreground is the Danube, and the background is the Inn River.

Up on the opposite hill from the lookout is the Wallfahrtskirche Mariahilf, a baroque abbey built between 1627 and 1630.

This is me with Ursula, trying to be warm!

A not-very-good photo taken from the car as we were going down the hill from the lookout.

Ursula dropped us off in Passau, and we went exploring. There are lots of narrow cobbled lanes in Passau, great for photo opportunities!

We wandered through some delightful shops of art and craft made by local artists and artisans (nice tasteful stuff, not your touristy kitsch stuff), and then visited the Passau Museum of Glass. This is an amazing rabbit warren of 35 rooms full of glass and crystal jugs/glasses etc. It takes an age to get through all of them, so filled in quite a bit of time.

We then walked back to the train station through the main shopping precinct and after quite a wait where the station staff didn't quite seem to know what was going on, managed to get a train back to Vilshofen.

Ursula had once again organised kuchen for afternoon tea. Mmmm!

That evening, after a slightly rushed dinner (Ursula is a great cook), Winfried had organised for us to visit the Vilshofen Volunteer Fire Station, because Tim was a member of the volunteer bushfire service here in Sydney. We had known about this before we left, so Tim had organised to take a bushfire helmet to give to them as a present (it took up quite a bit of space in his suitcase!) and they returned the favour and presented Tim with a German fire helmet, which glows in the dark! They thought the bushfire helmet was very flimsy and plasticky, and would melt too easily - Tim had to explain that if you were close enough to the fire for your helmet to melt you were too close!