We stopped along the River Danube at Melk and toured the Melk Abbey, a Baroque Benedictine compound built in the early part of the 18th century. Melk Abbey is among the world’s most famous monastic sites.
Melk is an agricultural area and lies on the south bank of the Danube River in the Wachau Valley of Lower Austria. It was nice to see the countryside after riverine views:
We will go through 68 locks on this cruise on the Danube, Main and Rhine rivers. It’s done quite casually, no announcements. Open your curtains at 5 o’clock in the morning and you may be face-to-face with a mossy concrete wall. Back in another lock. It’s a tight squeeze against a lock wall. We go in tandem with another boat along side as we wait for the lock to fill with water and raise us up. Daytime locks become a topside event with a party atmosphere. Even the locals come out to watch the action. That action has been impeded of late by lock workers striking. Could a boat be in a lock and the workers strike, leaving it there? Hopefully not.
One reason, we have learned, that we had to transfer ships was to get around the lock in Melk, Austria. The Rinda was on the west side and the Tor, the boat we started out on, was on the east side. So we got off in Melk and were bused about a half hour to the Rinda, avoiding the lock there. We are merrily on our way to Amsterdam the next 10 days. UPDATE: The Rinda is halted at the next lock. The lock is broken and there are boats ahead of us. Looks like a delay of maybe three or four hours. Lucky for us the galley pantry and bar are fully stocked!
I took this picture from our balcony, leaning over the railing and looking at our ship entering the lock. Not an inch to spare!
The Rinda is on the left, another boat on the right, slightly ahead of us, sitting in the rising waters of the lock:
People on our deck and the other boat have inches to spare between them and converse as the lock fills with water:
We are still deep in the lock:
The audience on the bridge watched the entire process, which takes perhaps half an hour.
Out of the lock, we go under the bridge, where the bicyclists were watching. We could not stand until we were through the bridge. As you can see, barely an inch to spare. The gray horizontal stretch across the upper half of the photo is the bridge and the brown decking is the top deck of the Rinda. The white “box” in the center is the wheelhouse. The people standing are on the bow and are ableto stand because we have just come under the bridge. The rest of the longboat is yet to go through:
Our sail away from Budapest last night was magical, as the bridges and buildings on the River Danube were ablaze in lights. Tom’s images captured the golden light as we glided by on the Viking longboat Tor, bidding adieu to Hungary’s capital.
Postcards 