Danube River Cruise

We spent a really nice half day on an outing to cruise down the Danube from Durnstein to a small town closer to Vienna.  The river boat moved steadily but easily along the river and presented a slow and steady change of scenery the entire time.  With one stop at Spitz to lose some passengers and take on others, the entire cruise lasted about 2 hours on the river.

The sun was hot on the open deck, so we quickly moved to the covered part toward the bow of the boat.  That was also the cafe, so we enjoyed some liquid refreshment and later a snack as we watched the river bank slide past.  Part of the time it was just beautiful countryside, and part of the time very quaint and unique villages.  The photos on the Photo Album section for this post show the many towns and scenes along this trip.

Linda shared a table with a very nice Austrian woman who was cruising with her husband for the day, cruising down to Spitz for lunch, then cruising back to their starting point.  What a nice way to spend a day!  

Durnstein was a really nice village where we started, and there are a lot of nice photos from our start there.  This is a really good album to be sure and peruse.

From the famous song we had the impression that the Danube would be a fabulous blue color.  From the photos you will see that it was actually quite a muddy color for our cruise.  Likewise in Budapest the Danube was muddy as well.  We asked our tour director and he said the river is usually somewhat muddy colored, and more so now because of the recent rains.  His explanation for the "Blue Danube" mystique is that the song is about being in love and when you are in love everything looks blue!  Maybe that's it, who knows for sure.  But, I will never think of it as the Blue Danube again.