Hey, they make wine here

The Danube river upstream from Vienna held a quite a few castle remains.  I don't know what else to call them, but they were basically castles that were built along the river that were no longer being used and thus had fallen apart a couple hundred years ago.  To see them they warned us to get up early, so it was an early start but fun to sit up on the deck as the day started.  We also noted the number of vineyards we sailed past.  Quite the region with the hills and great views, though we had mostly rain the entire day.

As the morning wore, more and more of the passengers kept running up to the deck to check out the range of castle structures.  One of the interesting things about the Danube trip was there are markers along the river to tell you at which kilometer marker you are at and it helped as we had guide books that told us which castle was which in comparison to the marker.

After docked in a village across the river from Melk, we jumped on a bus that took us to the Melk Abbey.  The tour of the abbey was fascinating. It is used as a school now, but the students were out for the summer so we missed some of that view, but we were also able to see most of the abbey and it is set-up nicely for tours.  The restoration is very beautiful and the history is quite engaging.  We had a brief tour of the gardens, which Kathy and I both felt we wished it was not pouring out so we could see more of it.  I think we would love to go back to the town.

This is a view from back of the abbey overlooking the town.

The abbey is the main source of employment for the town and it fits in centrally to what goes on in that town.  Our guide for the city (which was different than the guide we had for the abbey) was born in the town and grew up and lived there her whole life.  She talked about life growing up there and going to school at the abbey. It was a nice perspective.

After seeing the abbey and what not we wandered through the town and bought some gifts and had more coffee and pastries.  Yum.   It was another nice night on the ship and as we sailed we saw past other cities we saw some interest light shows the buildings displayed.  We had a fun evening on the ship with a talent show and games in the lounge.