Last lock on a trip with over 80 of them.  Vienna is on the other side somewhere.

Another kind of lock

 It has apparently become the custom many places in Europe for couples to create "love locks".  A couple engraves a padlock, locks it to a bridge, and tosses the key into the river.  We saw them on many bridges, although in some places they have been banned because the added weight on the bridge was an issue. These were on a railing along the Main in Wurzburg.

There is a long row of locks:

Why does Scheinfurt cage its rocks?

 Is it afraid they will get away?

Sheep??

Internet has been iffy for a while, so these will be some random comments as I think of them.

We are sailing up the Main river.  It has locks.  MANY locks,  From the Rhine to the Rhine/Main/Danube canal, there are 34 locks.  So we're getting quite acquainted with them.

A few are just metal and concrete, as I would have expected.  Most have narrow strips of land separating them from the rest of the Main, which mostly has small dams.  These strips typically have grass, and sometimes bushes, and even occasionally decent size trees.  So okay, they've been there a while and they have acquired some plant life.  Occasionally there are ducks.  Nice.

Noticing this did not prepare me for sheep!  Three or four of them cheerfully grazing, or just relaxing, along the lock.  Right.

Am Rhein

We have sailed up the Rhine all day, stopping in Koblenz, sailing past the Lorelie, and docking this  evening in Rudesheim .   Koblenz had very steep roofs, sometimes two or three stories worth, leading to impressive rows of gables, stacked three rows high.

Frankfurt tomorrow, with a side trip by bus to Heidelberg. I'm not at all sure I want a couple of hours of bus trip in order to spend a few hours in Heidelberg.  I might just stay in Frankfurt.

And we say goodbye to Amsterdam, passing an impressive cheese shop on our way through the train station to mail some postcards before the Captain's dinner.  (six courses!)

We sailed through our first two locks, going along the Amsterdam-Rhine canal and starting up the Rhine, on our way to Cologne.  We should arrive tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon.

And the third thing that means Holland to me:  licorice.  Sweet, salty, extra salty.  Soft, chewy, hard.  Drops. sticks, shapes. And it's ALL good.

This is a licorice stand in the open air market in Utrecht.  Each bin is a different kind of licorice.  We managed to get away with only half a kilo :-).

The second thing that makes me sure I'm in the Netherlands:

Bikes.  Bikes everywhere. in Multi-layered stacks.  Our tour guide said that there are more bikes in Amsterdam than there are residents.  This is a bike park near our hotel in Utrecht.  There are also the traffic light specifically for cyclists, with bike icons in red or green.

At breakfast I went for totally typical Dutch breakfast -- bread with things on.  Seven kinds of cheese, a very intense apple spread of some kind, and chocolate sprinkles. I remember bread with sprinkles from hosteling 50 years ago!

 Things to put on bread. 

.