So, at last -- on August 29 -- the long-awaited and long-anticipated river cruise finally set sail. The line is called Avalon Waterways, and the ship is Avalon Artistry II. Here's a picture of the ship from the company website.
Virtually all of the modern European river cruise ships conform to these basic size limits, plus or minus a few centimetres here or there. It's an essential formula so that these vessels can fit into the many locks and under the numerous low bridges along the waterways.
Here are a couple of photos of my cabin. One looks from the windows across the bed towards the entrance.
The other looks at the three-section window, with the two movable sections wide open to convert the entire room into a "balcony."
Bear in mind that this 200 square foot (18.5 square metres) cabin, which Avalon calls a "suite", is larger than the industry average, and this size makes up 4/5 of the cabins on the newer Avalon ships. And yes, it is still very, very cozy. Welcome to the compact little world of river cruising.
The capacity of a ship like this isn't huge. This vessel has 64 cabins, and therefore can carry 128 passengers maximum load. That one fact helps to explain why river cruises are much more expensive than their ocean-going counterparts.
But it also explains the unique attraction of river cruising. You can, and do, meet virtually all of your fellow passengers during a 1-week trip. You quickly form the habit of dropping into and out of conversations at any opportunity. You join up with new friends for drinks in the lounge or at tables for meals without a second thought.
On our first afternoon, we sailed up the Danube from Vienna to Krems. Along the way, we passed two water level control dams, which meant we had to pass through two locks. Here's what the second one looked like.
The lower gates close like big hinged doors.
The upper gate, however, drops in one piece straight down under the water like an elevator. This pic shows the exact moment it disappears.
After the gate vanished, there was some bubbling and heaving of the water, as you would see over a sinking ship. All the work of filling the lock with water, or emptying it if you are going downhill, is done by gravity. Just open the valves and let the river do the work for you. This routine is going to be repeated a number of times during the trip.
We docked for the night at the city of Krems, with mountains looming ahead of us. After dinner we enjoyed the entertaining tunes of a local band, "La Stravanza," featuring a guitar/soprano sax/alto sax player, a double bass player, and a singer who double on barrel organ -- one of the hand-cranked organs on wheels traditionally used by street musicians. Her colleague explained that she had hand-punched the thousands of holes in each of the paper rolls that cue the organ when to play, arranging by hand every song that needed the organ. She also made effective use of a small microphone and speaker built into an unwound sousaphone to create a gramophone-horn-like vocal sound for a couple of 1920s songs. Great fun, high-energy show.
The next morning, by the literal dawn's early light, we slipped our moorings at Krems and sailed the short distance to Durnstein, a small walled medieval town with a ruined castle and a beautiful abbey. It was in the castle above Durnstein that Leopold of Austria held Richard the Lionhearted of England for ransom.
As we entered the town, we saw this set of flood line markings on a wall. It was a bit shocking to see just how far the Danube could get above its current level (you can see the river in the background). The little black plate on the wall represents the newest high water mark, set in 2002.
Inside Durnstein itself, there was plenty to see, from a quaint little town square...
...to a hotel named in honour of the Lionheart, with a pub named after the minstrel who (according to legend) found and freed him..,
...or from a nest of house swallows (note the head peeking out at the far left of the nest)…
...to the ultimate in excitement -- a home with a 17th century cannonball embedded in the wall.
In Durnstein we got our introduction to another locally-grown treat: apricots. Stores were selling apricot jams, apricot cakes, apricot cookies, apricot ice cream, and apricot adult beverages -- and the lamentable results of that last item were publicly on display.
The product is made by soaking the fruit in a mixture of apricot liqueur and apricot brandy, and then putting the whole works into a glass jar and sealing it. The price was to get one apricot as a taster.
The only view of the blue-towered abbey church which I got was this one as we sailed away. The onion-shaped dome on the tower is one of the most common features of Austrian/German/Bavarian church architecture.
From Durnstein we sailed through the Wachau Valley wine growing region. The Wachau is definitely not a broad civilized valley with mountains a discreet distance away on the sides. It's an undoubted gorge, and a very scenic one, replete with pretty villages, ruined castles, and steeply-terraced hillside vineyards.
In the afternoon we docked at Melk for a guided visit to the enormous Benedictine monastery, the Stift Melk (the use of the name "Stift" signifies that this property was a gift, to the Benedictine Order from the then-rulers of the Wachau valley, over 1000 years ago).
I saw this massive structure for the first time in 1979. I'd been teaching high school history for just one year, but I was already certain that, if I didn't know it all, I certainly knew whatever was worth knowing. (Just for the record, I was wrong -- as I'm still discovering.) I was taking a night train from Zurich to Vienna, and happened to wake up around 4:00 in the morning. I rolled the window shade up a bit, looked out, and saw a huge floodlit Baroque palace on top of a steep hill, complete with onion-domed towers and hundreds of windows.
It astounded me, because I knew of no such gigantic palace complex anywhere in Austria other than Salzburg or Vienna. Took me a bit of time, but over the next few days I finally worked out with a map that what I had seen was a monastery.
This picture from the internet gives more or less the view which I first saw on that night.
This aerial view, also borrowed from the internet, shows the whole vast scope of the structure. The tour takes you through only one floor of the side of the complex farthest from the camera, then around the curving balcony on the end in front of the church, back into the near side and then downstairs to the church proper.
Ever since 1979, then, I had been wanting to visit Melk, and today was my day. Given the size of the complex, it was a lengthy walk, but it was worth while. The tour began with a multi-room museum which had many fascinating exhibits -- I would have loved to spend more time there. Major drawback -- all the placards and descriptions were in German only. I could probably work out 50% of the meanings, but it would take me a bit of time.
We then visited a large room with a trompe l'oeil ceiling (a deceptive painting of what appears to be a vaulted ceiling on a surface which is actually flat). After walking around the balcony, we entered the remarkable library, and from there we went down to the church.
Photography is not permitted inside the complex as it is still a working monastery, a school, and a church in daily use. So the interior shots here are all internet-sourced. My outside views could only have been done on a drizzly day like this.
The esplanade leading from the parking lot to the abbey proper.
The Imperial Courtyard, so called because the section of the guest room wing reserved for the imperial family faced this courtyard. As our guide pointed out, the guest wing had to be huge because of the simple fact that when Maria Theresa, for example, came to Melk for an overnight stay, she brought along a small group of 300 or so servants and courtiers!
A close-up of some decorative painting and sculpture, with the dome of the church appearing behind.
The view over the town of Melk and the former channel of the Danube from the curving end balcony.
The façade of the church from the balcony.
An internet view of the interior of the library -- actually, just one of 12 rooms comprising the library.
An internet view of the interior of the abbey church.
In the wee hours of the next morning, we docked at the sizable city of Linz, the heart and capital of the region of Upper Austria.
This city of 200,000 was heavily bombed in World War II, and has aimed to recover with active industries and a new and different vibe in its cultural life. But there's still a well-preserved old town area around the central market square, and that's where we explored in our morning foot tour.
The square featured another elaborately Baroque Trinitarian column like the Plague Column in Vienna, and erected for the same reason.
Among the many old buildings, the loveliest one was the government building of the state of Upper Austria, a former monastery, with courtyard balconies decked with flowers.
The city's Gothic cathedral is longer and wider inside than St. Stephen's in Vienna, and only 2 metres shorter in the spire. But it's not authentic Gothic, having been built around the turn of the last century. Still, the relatively austere (for Austria) interior has a beauty all its own, and the simplicity undoubtedly highlights the many stained glass windows. The interior was far too dim for good photography without professional lighting, but as compensation we did get to hear the organ being tried out during its tuning and cleaning -- a mighty and majestic instrument, befitting the size of the church, and ideally located in the gallery at the rear end of the nave.
Our ship was docked right close to the main square in Linz, and had a good view across the river to the hill country stretching north towards the Czech Republic -- and a good view of another prize-winning onion-dome.
But it was in Linz that I finally put two and two together, and realized who the "George Washington of Austria" was -- who it had to be. I'm not talking about a great military leader, nor about a wealthy landowner, and certainly not a statesman! But think about it. Anyone who has ever travelled widely in the eastern United States has undoubtedly encountered a sign "George Washington slept here," accompanied by details of date and what the great man was doing at the time. Especially in smaller towns and cities, local tourism people always make a point of drawing it to your attention.
By that yardstick, then, the George Washington of Austria is....
(drumroll, please!)
...well, you can see for yourself.
This happened when he was six years old, and was being dragged from court to court by his dominating father, so that he could show off his prodigious talents.
We sailed from Linz after lunchtime, and cruised up a broad and serene stretch of the Danube for a couple of hours.
In mid-afternoon, we docked at the small riverside town of Aschach -- with its waterfront promenade and utter lack of crowds calling out for a good brisk afternoon walk, the first such walk I've had since leaving Canada apart from hiking at top speed through multi-kilometre airport terminals.
Across the river, the hills arose again, and here a pretty little country hotel looked like it might have been adapted from an earlier small castle. If I were going to stay here, I would certainly want to give this place a try -- just because of the views.
The lower gates close like big hinged doors.
The upper gate, however, drops in one piece straight down under the water like an elevator. This pic shows the exact moment it disappears.
After the gate vanished, there was some bubbling and heaving of the water, as you would see over a sinking ship. All the work of filling the lock with water, or emptying it if you are going downhill, is done by gravity. Just open the valves and let the river do the work for you. This routine is going to be repeated a number of times during the trip.
We docked for the night at the city of Krems, with mountains looming ahead of us. After dinner we enjoyed the entertaining tunes of a local band, "La Stravanza," featuring a guitar/soprano sax/alto sax player, a double bass player, and a singer who double on barrel organ -- one of the hand-cranked organs on wheels traditionally used by street musicians. Her colleague explained that she had hand-punched the thousands of holes in each of the paper rolls that cue the organ when to play, arranging by hand every song that needed the organ. She also made effective use of a small microphone and speaker built into an unwound sousaphone to create a gramophone-horn-like vocal sound for a couple of 1920s songs. Great fun, high-energy show.
The next morning, by the literal dawn's early light, we slipped our moorings at Krems and sailed the short distance to Durnstein, a small walled medieval town with a ruined castle and a beautiful abbey. It was in the castle above Durnstein that Leopold of Austria held Richard the Lionhearted of England for ransom.
As we entered the town, we saw this set of flood line markings on a wall. It was a bit shocking to see just how far the Danube could get above its current level (you can see the river in the background). The little black plate on the wall represents the newest high water mark, set in 2002.
Inside Durnstein itself, there was plenty to see, from a quaint little town square...
...to a hotel named in honour of the Lionheart, with a pub named after the minstrel who (according to legend) found and freed him..,
...or from a nest of house swallows (note the head peeking out at the far left of the nest)…
...to the ultimate in excitement -- a home with a 17th century cannonball embedded in the wall.
In Durnstein we got our introduction to another locally-grown treat: apricots. Stores were selling apricot jams, apricot cakes, apricot cookies, apricot ice cream, and apricot adult beverages -- and the lamentable results of that last item were publicly on display.
The product is made by soaking the fruit in a mixture of apricot liqueur and apricot brandy, and then putting the whole works into a glass jar and sealing it. The price was to get one apricot as a taster. The only view of the blue-towered abbey church which I got was this one as we sailed away. The onion-shaped dome on the tower is one of the most common features of Austrian/German/Bavarian church architecture.
From Durnstein we sailed through the Wachau Valley wine growing region. The Wachau is definitely not a broad civilized valley with mountains a discreet distance away on the sides. It's an undoubted gorge, and a very scenic one, replete with pretty villages, ruined castles, and steeply-terraced hillside vineyards.
In the afternoon we docked at Melk for a guided visit to the enormous Benedictine monastery, the Stift Melk (the use of the name "Stift" signifies that this property was a gift, to the Benedictine Order from the then-rulers of the Wachau valley, over 1000 years ago).
I saw this massive structure for the first time in 1979. I'd been teaching high school history for just one year, but I was already certain that, if I didn't know it all, I certainly knew whatever was worth knowing. (Just for the record, I was wrong -- as I'm still discovering.) I was taking a night train from Zurich to Vienna, and happened to wake up around 4:00 in the morning. I rolled the window shade up a bit, looked out, and saw a huge floodlit Baroque palace on top of a steep hill, complete with onion-domed towers and hundreds of windows.
It astounded me, because I knew of no such gigantic palace complex anywhere in Austria other than Salzburg or Vienna. Took me a bit of time, but over the next few days I finally worked out with a map that what I had seen was a monastery.
This picture from the internet gives more or less the view which I first saw on that night.
This aerial view, also borrowed from the internet, shows the whole vast scope of the structure. The tour takes you through only one floor of the side of the complex farthest from the camera, then around the curving balcony on the end in front of the church, back into the near side and then downstairs to the church proper.
By User:MatthiasKabel - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12039388
Ever since 1979, then, I had been wanting to visit Melk, and today was my day. Given the size of the complex, it was a lengthy walk, but it was worth while. The tour began with a multi-room museum which had many fascinating exhibits -- I would have loved to spend more time there. Major drawback -- all the placards and descriptions were in German only. I could probably work out 50% of the meanings, but it would take me a bit of time.
We then visited a large room with a trompe l'oeil ceiling (a deceptive painting of what appears to be a vaulted ceiling on a surface which is actually flat). After walking around the balcony, we entered the remarkable library, and from there we went down to the church.
Photography is not permitted inside the complex as it is still a working monastery, a school, and a church in daily use. So the interior shots here are all internet-sourced. My outside views could only have been done on a drizzly day like this.
The esplanade leading from the parking lot to the abbey proper.
The Imperial Courtyard, so called because the section of the guest room wing reserved for the imperial family faced this courtyard. As our guide pointed out, the guest wing had to be huge because of the simple fact that when Maria Theresa, for example, came to Melk for an overnight stay, she brought along a small group of 300 or so servants and courtiers!
A close-up of some decorative painting and sculpture, with the dome of the church appearing behind.
The view over the town of Melk and the former channel of the Danube from the curving end balcony.
The façade of the church from the balcony.
An internet view of the interior of the library -- actually, just one of 12 rooms comprising the library.
An internet view of the interior of the abbey church.
In the wee hours of the next morning, we docked at the sizable city of Linz, the heart and capital of the region of Upper Austria.
This city of 200,000 was heavily bombed in World War II, and has aimed to recover with active industries and a new and different vibe in its cultural life. But there's still a well-preserved old town area around the central market square, and that's where we explored in our morning foot tour.
The square featured another elaborately Baroque Trinitarian column like the Plague Column in Vienna, and erected for the same reason.
Among the many old buildings, the loveliest one was the government building of the state of Upper Austria, a former monastery, with courtyard balconies decked with flowers.
The city's Gothic cathedral is longer and wider inside than St. Stephen's in Vienna, and only 2 metres shorter in the spire. But it's not authentic Gothic, having been built around the turn of the last century. Still, the relatively austere (for Austria) interior has a beauty all its own, and the simplicity undoubtedly highlights the many stained glass windows. The interior was far too dim for good photography without professional lighting, but as compensation we did get to hear the organ being tried out during its tuning and cleaning -- a mighty and majestic instrument, befitting the size of the church, and ideally located in the gallery at the rear end of the nave.
Our ship was docked right close to the main square in Linz, and had a good view across the river to the hill country stretching north towards the Czech Republic -- and a good view of another prize-winning onion-dome.
But it was in Linz that I finally put two and two together, and realized who the "George Washington of Austria" was -- who it had to be. I'm not talking about a great military leader, nor about a wealthy landowner, and certainly not a statesman! But think about it. Anyone who has ever travelled widely in the eastern United States has undoubtedly encountered a sign "George Washington slept here," accompanied by details of date and what the great man was doing at the time. Especially in smaller towns and cities, local tourism people always make a point of drawing it to your attention.
By that yardstick, then, the George Washington of Austria is....
(drumroll, please!)
...well, you can see for yourself.
This happened when he was six years old, and was being dragged from court to court by his dominating father, so that he could show off his prodigious talents.
We sailed from Linz after lunchtime, and cruised up a broad and serene stretch of the Danube for a couple of hours.
In mid-afternoon, we docked at the small riverside town of Aschach -- with its waterfront promenade and utter lack of crowds calling out for a good brisk afternoon walk, the first such walk I've had since leaving Canada apart from hiking at top speed through multi-kilometre airport terminals.
Across the river, the hills arose again, and here a pretty little country hotel looked like it might have been adapted from an earlier small castle. If I were going to stay here, I would certainly want to give this place a try -- just because of the views.
