Wednesday 29 th Durnstein to Melk

Woke today to grey skies and low cloud, but as it happened, the weather improved during the day until mid to late afternoon.
Sailed into Durnstein about 7:30am and after breakfast headed into town. It is a lovely place, although it only has 500 residents, it is a city. Built on the side of a hill, it is a tourist Mecca because there were five boats moored there. We were in the middle of three that were triple parked. That is called rafting where the passengers in the outside ship have to walk through the other two to get to the dock.
It is a wine growing region of Austria and the vines are all terraced into the side of the hills along the river. They grow a variety called Gruner Veltliner, a white wine, and also Riesling.
The guide took us through the city and pointed out the shops where we could spend our money(!!), we bought some souvenirs ,  then went to a wine tasting session, at 11:00am if you please. We tasted the above two wines and a Zweigelt (red). Then it was back to the ship for lunch.
The ship set off for Melk which is 35 kilometers away, some of the travelers elected to ride bikes instead of staying on board, they took about the same time to get to Melk as we did, they travelled along the old tow-paths beside the river, it would be a nice option if you were fit enough.
Those of us on board enjoyed cruising up the river watching the scenery. there are villages dotted all along the river and some of them still had their Maypoles up after their Mayday celebrations, the maypoles have a pine tree stuck to the top of the pole. Th e sun was out by this time and was quite warm. We were served Kaiserspritz to drink and onion tart to eat as we cruised and we sat on the top deck in the sunshine.
Arriving at Melk we were herded into buses and drove the short distance to Melk Abbey. This was an important Benedictine Abbey, but only a few monks are there now, it does house a primary school and It has a very impressive library and a matching grand room. The church is also impressive to say the least (abc!).
By this time the wind was blowing a gale and we headed back to the ship. We were entertained for an hour by a string trio who were very good. The ship set sail about 7:45 as we were having dinner and shortly after went through another lock. We will sail overnight to Linz, then we will have our excursion to Salzburg.