Vienna

After cruising from Melk, we arrived in Vienna (Austria) with plans to dock in a port outside of Vienna (Wien) for the evening. The docking port outside of Vienna was the furthest from the main city, by far, of any of the ports we stopped at on this river cruise. A bus took us into Vienna that evening for a concert and a bus tour of Vienna at night.

We attended the Vienna Residence Orchestra Mozart and Strauss Concert held in Palais Auersperg. The Vienna Residence Orchestra is a chamber orchestra with small number of ballet dancers and opera singers who participate in a subset of the performed pieces. They did an excellent job presenting pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Strauss within the elegant Palais Auersperg.

We really enjoyed the concert, but a nice unexpected addition was the bus driving around the Innere Stadt and Ringstrasse ("Vienna Ring Road") portions of Vienna at night. A guide described some of the key structures as we passed them and it was a nice opportunity to see them lit up at night.

Because of long-running drought conditions in that area and levels of the Danube River reaching dangerously low levels for the river cruise ships, it was decided that we'd cruise to Bratislava (Slovakia) dock there for the night. I wasn't terribly disappointed in this because the Vienna port was far enough away from Vienna to require more effort to get into Vienna on one's own from the ship. We would bus from Bratislava to Vienna the next morning for our full day in Vienna.

When we arrived in Vienna by bus this next morning, the bus driver drove the bus through the city to allow us to see several of the sightings we had seen the previous evening. Just as it was great to see the city lit up the evening before, it was now nice to see the impressive city at daytime. We saw again saw several of the major sightings along and inside of the Ringstrasse.

The bus dropped us off in Vienna at the Neptune Fountain near Albertina Museum. That was our starting point for a walking tour of that area of the city.

The public square Josefsplatz was crowded, but was worth visiting.

Although we did not view the Spanish Riding School, we were able to view some of the Lippizzan horses and their home at Stallburg.

Although we did not go inside, the exterior of the Hofburg Palace was as impressive as one would expect.

At the bottom of the photograph of Hofburg Palace shown immediately above, one can see a bit of the Roman ruins found in front of that palace. The next photograph shows them a little bit closer.

Our tour guide led us to Kärntner Straße next.

These photographs are of the Vienna Pestsäule (Plague Column).

St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom) is described in Vienna: Once an Imperial Capital, today a Major European City of Culture as, "Vienna's most recognizable landmark and Austria's finest Gothic edifice."

We elected to participate in the optional tour of Schönbrunn Palace.

After touring significant rooms inside of Schönbrunn Palace, we walked around portions of the exterior and gardens, though there was far more to see than we had time for. (We purchased a copy of Schönbrunn Palace: Guide to the palace for its photographs of the interior.)

Spending a single day in Vienna is not even close to long enough to see a significant subset of the city's attractions. However, to really see a lot more of Vienna would have required significantly more time as many of its attractions are museums, concerts, and other cultural offerings that can take quite a bit of time to enjoy.

Cruising Danube from Melk to Vienna

One of the things I liked about the river cruise is that we spent a lot of time in the European cities and towns along the Danube River instead of cruising on the boat as much as one often does on a sea cruise. Some fellow travelers told us they prefer sea cruises because you do get more "breaks" during cruise days. On the Danube River cruise, we typically did most of our cruising at night, but one of the rare exceptions was the day we cruised from Melk to Vienna during the middle of the day.

There were numerous towns and other interesting sights during this cruise from Melk to Vienna. One of the most striking was the view of Schloss Schönbühel.

There were several other impressive sites to view.

One of the most fascinating parts of the daytime cruising for me was seeing the river locks in action. Our ship and cabin were really close to the edge of the first lock we went through that morning. The next three photographs illustrate how close.

In the next lock we traversed that day, we were further from the wall and the following series of photographs depict our descending in the lock.

Although I typically was happy about the nature of the river cruise being more time in town and less time cruising, it was fun to spend a few hours on this day cruising the beautiful Danube River and seeing so many impressive views.

Melk

One of the ports our river cruise ship stopped in was in Melk (Austria).

We were only in Melk for half of day and the prime attraction for the majority of that time was Melk Abbey (Stift Melk).

Melk Abbey is a Baroque monastery that still to this day houses Benedictine monks. The abbey is also used as a school for boys and girls.

A bus took us the short (but with steep incline at points) distance from the river port to the parking lot of the Melk Abbey.

The main entrance to Melk Abbey features statues of St. Koloman and St. Leopold along with the star from the coat of arms of Berthold Dietmayr.

The portal in the main entrance leads to the outer Gatekeeper's Courtyard and the Eastern Facade.

Moving through the next portal leads one to the Prelate's Courtyard and its fountain.

We found that some of the highlights of our various destinations in Europe came from the views provided from strategic overviews and Melk Abbey's view of the town of Melk and of the rivers was no exception.

The ticket to Melk Abbey included admission to the Stiftspark and Gartenpavillon, but we only spent a few minutes there because we wanted to see the town of Melk before returning to the cruise ship.

Those who did not want to see Melk would ride the bus back, so it allowed us the 20 or so minutes to walk through Melk and back to the cruise ship. We are happy that we made that decision and were able to experience the charming town of Melk, even if only for a few minutes.

Going back to the river port via Milk was also advantageous because of the views of Melk Abbey from that route.

Two additional blog posts that provide detailed descriptions of Melk Abbey based on river cruise visits are "Part 2: Austria: Melk Abbey, Wachau Valley and Vienna" and "Melk Abbey: Visiting Austria's Famous Abbey on the Danube". The blog post "Bob and Nella's World: Melk" also provides significant more details on Melk Abbey. Two other interesting resources are "The Best Things to Do in Melk, Austria" and "11 Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Melk."