Day 17 Krems an der Donau, Austria.

Joan's View

Henriette's backyard

Our morning started a little different today. First, Tony went to the market down the street and bought bananas for me, and a roll for himself. We put our paniers and any other bags in the "cellar" of our Airbnb, and left there about 8:45. I wore my tennis shoes and left my bike shoes with the bags. Our bike had a rare night of being outside, but our Airbnb host, Henriette, assured us that it was safe in her backyard. We rode about 2.5 miles, uphill again, to the Melk Abbey. It was easier traveling and securing our bike without paniers since we knew we would be there a little while. 

The dedicated ceiling cleaners

The Abbey was impressive. It is a Benedictine Abbey founded in 1089 when Leopold II, Margrave of Austria gave one of his castles to Benedictine monks from Lambach Abbey. It's still a monastery, most notably is its size, the details in the church and the ancient library. Many of the cruise ships visit there as well, so we saw lots of tour groups. We did our own tour though since most exhibits were explained in English, and it would have been really late for us to wait for a guided tour. I got a kick out of these two cleaning ladies who were cleaning the ceilings on our way in and then still on our way out. It takes some strength to steady that long poll for so long. Going outside of the Abbey is a huge courtyard, and the gardens on the other side of that are even bigger. Tony read it would take an hour to tour all of the gardens so we did a quick walk through.















Once again, we beat the big crowds. You can see from the picture below just how many other crazy cyclists climbed the hill to the Melk Abbey. There were only 2 bikes in the racks when we got there. We saw bus tours pouring in when we left, as well.

We left the Abbey and went up hill again to Emmersdorf to pick up our bags. Yes, Dane, believe it or not, it was up hill! 😣 I know Tony likes hills. but this was a ridiculous workout for the beginning of the day. 

The bike racks were full & covered too.

A small part of the gardens at the Abbey

 Tony monkeying around at the Abbey

                                                                                                     

Tony rowing on the Donau - a special exhibit at the Abbey

We got back on the trail and followed the bike trail signs the whole way to Krems. It took us through lots of small towns with narrow streets. We passed large groups of bike tours that included some Americans by the comments about our bike. We stopped in Spitz for lunch at another biergarten, and this time our table was part of a big vine though I doubt these were grapes. 

There were lots of turns and bumpy cobblestone in these old, small towns so we went slower than usual. Besides that we were riding into a fairly strong wind at times. We had to walk the bike through one of the towns because it was a busy shopping street. Some of the cruise ships dock in Krems, and as a result there were lots of souvenir shops. 






Toward the last half of the ride today we rode through heavy wine country, and I mean pure wine country. There seemed to be grape vines growing wherever there was space, like in the middle of a parking lot.  

Small shed dotted the rows of grapes

 Grapes were growing on both sides of us. The hillside had rows of grapes with small sheds here and there. Some larger buildings even had grapes growing alongside of them.


Arriving in Krems an der Donau, we found our place for the night. This room is kind of like a cave just because of the age of the building, but the room has everything we need. 





I wanted to go to Schmid's tonight for dinner based on some prior research. We walked about a mile to find it through the university area and then to another old section of town. Can you guess what Tony had?

On the walk back we took a slightly different path and came upon this cool truck. I think it's actually a travel company. How appropriate is that right now?

Tony's Extras

We got very few pictures inside the Church of the Abbey mainly because they prohibited pictures. Again, they didn't realize these pictures were for you. The ceilings were beautiful as you can get a glimpse from the right. I got two other pictures before they yelled at me. It was all your fault I got yelled at. 


We had a little shorter ride today, which was nice since we had so much sightseeing to do. All the small towns we went through were on the side of the mountain which had an uphill to get there. Yes, Dane there was a downhill to get back down. I only complain about the uphill. Downhill is not so bad. We rode through about as many vineyards in the valleys of Austria as the hops fields of Germany. Hops fields were much more impressive. 😀  This area reminds me of Italy when we went on vacation with Wade to Rome and Asissi. There were grape vines all over the place and the wine was excellent. When we got to Krems today, I walked to the local store and bought some wine. It was cheap like the wine in Italy and tasted excellent. Speaking of Wade, his fiance, Linda, got notice today that she passed her Bar Exam. GO LInda 👍👍👍. Yes, attorney jokes aren't as funny anymore. 

Even though we were in wine country when we were at the restaurant tonight, I got a beer. They had IPA's and I had my first IPA in Europe. It was very tasty. Not many places over here have a variety of beer. Jeff Puthoff would love it here. Anything but pilner beer is for yuppies. 
I sent a picture to my beer connoisseur, Lisa Wolters at Yellow Springs. She said it is not even a Large one, 😂. One last thing, when I was in Austria's version of Aldi's today, I had one item and it was the bottle of wine I bought. There was a huge line, but I got in the back of line and the lady in front of me pointed and said in German to go to the front of line. Confused, I went in front of her and everybody in line moved over and let me through. I went to the front of the line since I had only one item. How cool is that? Good thing Joan told me about that the other day, otherwise I would have been in confusion land. Looking forward to our ride to Vienna tomorrow.