ALONG THE DANUBE

Fruhstuck was fine. We talked with a really nice German couple - mostly in German...but a little English. We left to go to Durnstein, Austria because we read it was a quaint town on the Danube.

This view was just around the corner from the gasthaus where we stayed:


And on the other side of the road:




We went on the usual back roads for awhile and then hooked up to the autobahn where everyone drives like bats out of hell. Dad's memory of the drive today was me repeatedly saying, "hold it to 120 (kilometers per hour)"...I don't even know what that is in miles per hour...and I probably don't want to know. It was plenty fast with everyone zig-zagging in and out like the goofball Nascar wanna-be drivers in North Carolina.

As we went down the autobahn, here was a truck in front of us. Close...but no cigar !!


We stopped at a rest stop and for lunch we had a cup of coffee and those 2 desserts from 2 days ago. This is the view from the rest stop:


We travelled on a small road that went right along side of the Danube River. It was pretty slow driving and so we once again hooked up to the autobahn and made better time. We finally reached Durnstein (on the Danube) around 5:00. Again, we had a hard time finding a place to stay. The whole town is on one main little street...and it's an einbahnstrasse (a one-way street)...and I won't tell you how many times we accidentally found ourselves going down the wrong way in this little town. In order to find a place to stay, we had to leave the town and circle back about 4 or 5 times before we finally found this little gasthaus. It's tucked back in the middle of a vineyard. It's actually in the little berg just to the east of Durnstein...about 1/2 k. It's called OberLoiben.


Here's our parking space here:




I spoke to the little old lady here (in German...no English) and she showed me the room...it was very nice. Breakfast is included tomorrow morning.



I asked her if there was a restaurant close by that was open and she told me there was one down the road...you walk to the church and then take a left. We sure as heck didn't want to drive to the restaurant because it was down the one way road, going the wrong way. So we walked there...going through vineyards. It was about a mile. We took a left at the church and found this unassuming little restaurant. It was in the next town to the east of Oberloiben....called Unterloiben . We had good beer there - the grosse size (big!)



and had really good dirty golf ball soup (liver dumpling soup)


As we walked back to the gasthaus...we again took a turn at the church:



There is a castle that overlooks the area...built in the 1100's. King Richard the Lionhearted (of England) lived here for awhile, I believe against his will. What the heck an English king was doing over here is a mystery.

We didn't have internet in the little gasthaus, so couldn't post tonight. Will have to post the last two days when we get to a place tomorrow.

Location:Danube River, Austria