Warnemunde. 23/08/2016

The last stop. Germany at its best. This is my third visit and the lovely little gem with 8,000 inhabitants has not lost its charm. Immaculate houses,neat colourful gardens, tiny porches covered with flowers. The shops delightful,enticing. Streets safe to walk in,clean. So little traffic,quite negligible in fact,no buses. The town square easy to negotiate,everything one needs is here,kaffe at every corner,a pharmacy where I got exactly the kind of old fashioned elastoplast I was looking for for the toe I am still nursing [ not the useless fast healing strips]. There is a strange little shoe shop with strange shoes,they look old fashioned yet are the latest fashion. I bought four pairs today,but about the shopping later. A small hotel at the sea-front to the left from the bridge where I had excellent schnitzel and an apple strudel [ not the best I have ever had, but good nonetheless],when I was here last, was my first choice for lunch but then I decided to try another place. There was a very busy restaurant at almost the end of the sea-front to the right from the bridge,but I wasn't hungry when I passed by and when almost an hour later I did want to sit down, I came across another little gem,but too many people had the same idea,the queue far too long, so I retraced my steps and went inside the Kaffe Backerei Sparre I had passed earlier. The sandwich was E X C E L L E N T,filled with ground meat,vegetables and pickled cabbage,the last bite as good as the first. Small espresso was excellent but too small, so had a cappuccino and a cake,a twirly whirly with poppy seeds. Good, but had it been without the white sugar glaze it would have been even better,I am not much for the fancy footwork. And it was time to return to the ship. Some people went on a bus to Berlin. Four hours on a bus is three hours too many. One of the places to visit was Sachsenhousen Concentration Camp by Berlin, the first Nazi concentration camp. Who on earth would want to see this desolate place filled with grief and pain and death,on a holiday and why was it a part of the itinerary in the first place? As in 2012 there will be German Beerfest with Local Ooom-Pah Brass Band & Barrel Organ performance laid on tonight on the ship by the Germans. Quite wonderful and absolutely not to be missed. Then at midnight we will set off for Southampton. The time has passed far too quickly. I am already thinking where to sail next. How can any-one not love cruising?