Thursday, June 16, 2011

Passau Day 2

This morning was my first awakening in our new hotel.  That was not to say it was a nice awakening.  We forgot to put a Do Not Disturb sign on our door.  The room service woke us up in the morning with a big, loud, knock on our door.  Oh, I forgot to tell you, breakfast stopped at 10:00.  So we had to wake up early.  If it were my hotel, I would let my guests sleep more.   

After breakfast, I was doing a little school work, you know the standard math and reading, when David surprised us by coming to our hotel!  He had been staying at another hotel for a few days. When he arrived, we decided to go explore around town for awhile.  Our first destination was a wooded park.  It had a nice swing set and a teeter-totter.  We tried to balance on the teeter-totter without either side touching the ground. Then my dad stood balancing on the middle. To get the balance right, you had to move your weight along the log.
St. Paul's Cathedral


Later in the day, we visited some interesting churches. The first one was St. Paul’s Cathedral and it had black walls with a white curved Gothic ceiling and was lined with gold. It had many beautiful paintings of Jesus and Mary.  This church was built originally around 700 AD but was rebuilt later in the Baroque style. The Baroque style uses lots of gold. The second church we visited was the Passau Dom. It was much larger and had tall towers and a high ceiling which reminded me of the Gothic Regenburg Dom. This cathedral had many paintings of angels on the ceilings and was filled with an immense amount of gold lining.  I think the Passau Dom was originally a Gothic church and was transformed into a Baroque church in later years. This church appears Baroque to me because the style is light and happy.
After a lunch break, we headed up a long path to an old castle which had been renovated and changed into a museum.  When we got there, to our disappointment, the museum was already closed.  As we turned our faces in defeat down the steep stairs, we found the way out locked.  We jumped over a fence then continued down the trail. Unbeknownst to us, there were two more gates in our path, both locked. We barely managed to squeeze through one of the gates but accepted defeat on the other.  In shame, we crawled back through the gates to the museum and asked one of the museum guards to let us out and show us the way down.

Back in town we ended the day on the swings. Today was a long day and I thank my mom and dad for there help with this entry.  Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic

5 comments:

  1. Ahhh!! I bet squeezing through all those gates was cool... and scary.
    Love the photos.
    ANNE

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  2. Great pictures! Love seeing the family shots!

    Castle museum? Way cool. Bummer it was closed due to spending too much time touring Churches. Is there a lesson here? Hmmmm...

    Svetlana and I got locked inside a building lobby in Venice. A door we should not have gone through locked behind us and required a key from both sides. Trapped inside, we looked at each other in Darwinian stares - who's going to eat whom first, and when? Fortunately, about five minutes into the ordeal, a small group returning home unlocked the door. For now, Svetlana is safe! Ha!

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  3. Rohan,

    Dude! Great blog you got going here. Excellent pictures. You have a good eye for composition. Deanna and I are jealous, we wish we could be there with you. Leave it to you guys to turn a visit to a castle museum into an adventure.

    Deanna&Dan

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  4. Rohan,
    Great blog - as usual!
    Grandma

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  5. Andrew, while we were locked in the castle, I referenced the Donner party. I clearly called Cat!
    Anne, for me it was a breeze, but my Dad barely made it through.
    Grandma, Deanna and Dan, thanks for reading!
    Rohan

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