G & J away from home

Saturday, 9 May

Hmm.  Didn't realise I had got so far behind with this.  I blame all the wonderful places we've visited as I've been hard-pressed to get the photos sorted each night without getting the blog done, too.

Never mind.  I'll backdate the posts and they'll appear as I never missed a day! :o)


Onboard

As always the view out the window when we get up was interesting.  Even before breakfast we were sailing past interesting little towns and ahead of us when I took the following photo was another cruise ship doing a spot turn.

Good morning Danube

The photos I take from our room often include a bit of the boat on the left-hand side (if the photo is looking back) or right-hand side (if the photo is looking ahead).  This is not just my crazy photo-taking but done deliberately to show that these photos are taken from the stateroom window.

Conveniently the tv in the room has a channel that shows the view from the front of the boat, in this case the boat that had been turning in the previous photo was now docking in front of us.

The view out the front of the boat

Durnstein

This morning we visited Durnstein in the Wachau valley.  It was a very pretty, very old town on the riverbank with a castle above it (famous for have held captive Richard the Lionheart) and the Augustinian abbey at one end.

One particular building caught my eye for a number of reasons - the date on the front, the grape vines trained to grow up the walls, the amazing handkerchief-sized garden that seemed to have everything in it.  I have a million photos of it, but here are a couple:

Old buildings

Lily of the valley

And then the cat turned up - a very friendly girl she was too, though if she thought people were getting too close she jumped up behind the bars on the window and slipped inside the house.  (Yes, I have a million photos of her, too!)

The Durnstein cat

Everywhere we looked there were interesting buildings and features:

Lamps & Lights: more decorative than functional

Narrow streets

When we had free time I raced back to the first shop I'd seen in the town - the House of Colors.  It was always going to be a match made in heaven.

House of Colors business card

 I bought a bag and a t-shirt - nothing traditionally Austrian or from the local area (other than that the lady who does the art work lives and has a shop in Durnstein).  Colour and glitter - what more could a person want?

My new bag

The glitter is hard to see in the photo but trust me, it's there.

During his tour Gary walked to the castle on the top of the hill - a little steeper than he expected, I think, and here he is making his way back to the ship:

Gary arrives back at the ship after his climb

Onboard

Once all the passengers straggled back to the ship the captain steered us away from the dock using the side control panel and then raced off to the bridge to get us underway, while Gary seated the control panel cover on correctly.  In the photo the baroque abbey with the blue church tower can be seen.  Roger (from Ashburton) is supervising!

Roger, Gary, and the blue church tower

Between Durnstein and Grein we cruised through the beautiful Wachau valley which was just bristling with pretty towns on the riverbank, most with interesting churches.  I've picked one at random:

Riverside churches

This evening we sat with new passengers Maureen and Ross from Perth, Australia.  Gary's off at a concert in the Panorama Lounge and I'm here tippy-tappy-typing.
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