We spent the morning cruising the Wachau Valley, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a stretch of the Danube that has steep hillsides with vineyards climbing up them, quaint Austrian villages, and huge castles on the cliffs above. We spent a couple of hours watching the scenery. It was cloudy and quite cool but the scenery was beautiful. We docked in Melk around noon. After lunch, we all went on a tour of Melk Abbey. It is a huge 900 year old Benedictine...

It's actually the day after Vienna and this will again be short. We are happy but tired. We took a bus/walking tour of the city in the morning. Vienna must have about a billion palaces (well maybe only a million), each one more impressive than the next. After the tour we had some free time. One of the things you have to do in Vienna is to have a coffee at one of their coffee houses (Wiener Kaffeehaus). We found one quickly and sat down at the bar. Our timing was ...

We got up to find a beautiful sunny morning. After eating breakfast at the hotel, we went out to explore Munich. We found it strange to see people at sidewalk cafés drinking their morning beers. We spent a morning in Munich and decide to go to Salzburg, Austria which was a short train ride away. Using our rail pass, we took the train to Salzburg. It is one the most beautiful cities we have seen. It is along a river with the Alps rising behind. We spent the a...