Krems- Vienna, 20 July

Only 75 km to Vienna. And 2 Schleusse. Nothing to worry about. The Krems marineros were slowly  waking up from the marilen (apricot) party. Les and I took a walk through the old town of Krems. Beautifullly old and well preserved. We have to come back the the old Post Hotel. They have a lovely inner yard surrounded by the balcony a rooms. 

The magnificent Benediktiner kloster Götweig is seen in a distance. 

The wine growing hillsides of Krems Und Stein..

I, Carl was interested in this piece of art. Or was it a real thing from the past to hold Anababtist for public viewing?

Early morning walk through Krems while waiting for the diesel station to open at 10.00.

The towns Krems and Stein have joined into one town. The hafenmeister told as that between Krems ans Stein is the town "und". This was his joke, Krems, Und, Stein. Ha ha.

This weekend Stein is having a Marilen festival and the whole town is geared up to serving apricots in every conceivable way, even, wait for it, apricot knödel!

The beautiful Post Hotel where Carl has promised that we comeback back to, on land!

We have now on two occasions learnt from friendly Austrians that we have managed to find the most popular, local, places. In Grein we were at Cafe Schörli, and in Krems, the Heurigen in a little village, Egelsee, where we were told that  95 procent of the guests were from that area. Heurigens get permission from the local authorities to sell their wine and locally farm produced food at certain given times during the year. Heurigen Wittmann had a few weeks in July and August to do this.  Other farmers are also allocated times when they do the same. A farmer may not advertise with posters that he has an open Heurigen, but decorates his entrance with flowers and vegetable displays. Great idea and we will return.

Entering Vienna. We saw these unusual fishing boats.

Bought a bag  of apricots, this is the last one. These are the best apricots i have ever tasted, and I come from apricot country.

Passet the 2000 km mark, 2000 km to Black Sea. It was so windy and choppy it was difficult to keep the camera stil.

For about 1 hour after Krems we passed through beautiful countryside with hills an vineyards on the left bank. Even the Danube was friendly and calm, except for all the enormous tourist boats we met. After an hour or two, the river became much wider and the scenery quite uninteresting. And the wind came up, might as well have been on the sea! Of course Carl loves it!

On entering Vienna after nearly 6 hours in wind and waves, we spotted a speed boat with 3 people on boards who seemed to be calling for help. I was hoping that they were just waving, but Carl insisted on finding out if they needed help. And of course they did so we towed them into the marina about 3 km down the river. Good on you Carl, for helping people in need.