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.