Vilshofen an der Donau

Vilshofen, Germany, was the Danube River port town from which we embarked on our Gate 1 Travel river cruise on the Monarch Empress.

Donau is another name for the Danube River and Vilshofen is referenced as "Vilshofen an der Donau" based on its location, which is described on the International Trading Company's web page as, "located in the southern part of the Bavarian Forest and on the banks of the Danube."

That same web page states that "three creeks - the Vils, the Pfudrach and the Wolfach - add here more water to the mighty [Danube] river."

Vilshofen was one of the smaller towns we saw on our river cruise and seems to have been the smallest in which we were docked in its port. However, we were happy to have the opportunity to spend several hours here before starting the river cruise. It was a great town to kick off our first trip to Europe.

Narrow cobblestone streets would be experienced frequently through the course of this trip, but we don't see them as much here in the United States except for certain areas such as in Boston. We really enjoyed strolling through the Stadplatz section of Vilshofen (with the historic town tower) and along the riverbanks.

We ended up having lunch on the street shown above (it seemed to have the restaurant options). We had been told that nearly all European restaurants accept credit cards, but all three proprietors we talked to in Vilshofen only accept cash. We had a small amount of local currency (Euros), but decided to play it safe and withdrew additional Euros from an ATM at a bank located on this street. We ate lunch at Burger Brothers & More because they had really nice outdoor seating available, because the items on the menu photographs looked good, and because the menus included English titles above several of the German food item descriptions.

Vilshofen provided us with a nice, relatively quiet introduction of the types of things we'd see on this trip. I didn't really "feel like I was really in Europe" until we visited Vilshofen. I'm very happy now that I selected it as the embarkation point for our cruise, a decision I made without really knowing what I was doing at the time.