Oh no, I'm suddenly pining for Germany and regretting not organising a tour in to Berlin. Currywurst, Berliner, we're missing out! WIth no plan for the day we took our cue from the area. Warnemunde is a fishing village founded around 1200 (AD) before being assimilated by it's larger neighbour Rostock. For the past century or two though it has established itself as a sea side resort town for this part of Germany. So resort pace it was for us today.

We docked around 5am, we made it off the boat around 10:30, resort pace. We strolled out through the train station and on into the local village. The main area of the town runs either side of a canal with loads of cafes and shops to occupy us. We strolled the streets of Warnemunde out to the lighthouse and beach. I was on the hunt for Hefeweizen, and Fid for a pretzel. We're in the wrong part of Deutchland for this stuff, but we found them in kind. Ed from our dining table was bigging up the medicinal properties for Erdinger and how small he remembers the brewery being when he was stationed near Munich. Small it may have been but it's the dominant Hefeweizen around here, save the odd place selling Schofferhoffer. The local pretzel has the Northener stamp on them too being shaped more like a quaver than the bayern shape.

The beach was all set up for Riviera style beach clubs, the volleyballers were hard at it, but it must still be too early in the season for the beach parties to get started. They're set up to seat thousands down here, it must get big once the weather shapes up. The two things they want you to know about this place is that they're big on liberal attitudes and erdbeer. There are strawberry stalls and shops everywhere. There's also sand art erotica and dildo billboards everywhere. The kids are still too young to get the billboards, but the phallic company logo and the "Sex Macht Schoen" tag line gave away the intent of the ads, even if the "Dildoking" company name was lost on them.

There is a train station right at the port, we decided to brave our way on the train into Rostock. We only screwed up once hopping off two stations too early, the next challenge was swapping to some light rail over into town. A local guy was busting to exercise his english on us, he helped us navigate the tram into the correct stop. Rostock is home to one of the worlds oldest universities and escaped much of the WWII city imapcts. So the old town still carries much of that centuries old history and architecture.

We strolled the old town stopping for the all important beer breaks every few minutes. I led the family on a wild goosechase down to the harbour in search of a bar I'd read that serves Franziskaner, no luck but at least it propelled us along through the city to see more of it. We had lunch on a sunny corner then headed back to hunt for Franziskaner in the supermarket. Gold! and only 89c a bottle! We emptied the store of all their stock and headed home to the boat

More Erdginer in the sunny beer garden at the port meant Gab could do some shopping, she treated herself to a stunning reminder of the area a pretty Erdbeer Bling Ring. Later back on board we met Mickey and Goofy in full Bavarian dress, how cool - that's the invite photo for this years Oktoberfest sorted!  

Our dinner table compadres were in Berlin today but made it back in time to join us for dinner and a drink over trivia. There is an Oscar Nominee who started their career on the Disney Wonder, that's the question that hooked me into playing tonights trivia hours before. We returned to play, she even asked that question, but I was having too much fun to remember the answer. It turns out the ladies were just filling in time waiting for the shop to reopen once we'd left port. Once it was open they were up and off. We found them an hour later, arms groaning with bounty from the store. 

Tomorrow is a sea day, or as the kids think of it, the reason for coming on this boat. The were up later than usual, but tomorrow morning we're booked for a character breakfast at ungodly o'clock, guten nacht.