Durnstein

Well, the concert last night was terrific! We really enjoyed it all. We had been discouraged from taking a camera, but we all wished we had taken one anyway as lots of people were taking photos. There was a 14 piece orchestra and they played some of the more well known and also some of the great classical music. There were 3 Opera singers, two of whom were more Operetta singers…they were all very good and entertaining. There were also 2 couples doing Ballroom Dancing to some of the tunes. Bren would have loved it! These dancers were very good also, and the costumes were really nice. So, a very enjoyable evening and quite a surprise to us really, as most of you might know, we’re not really classical music buffs.  We got back to the boat around 10:15 pm and the boat sailed towards our next stop soon afterwards.

This morning we docked in a little town called Durnstein. A very pretty Austrian town right on the River Danube. From the water we could see remains of a Castle very high on a hill overlooking the town. As we had docked earlier than advertised, Dave and I decided to climb up to the Castle. It took us about 25 minutes up very steep paths, with numerous breather stops, to reach the top, but the views from up there were so worth the effort. The nearby hills are covered in Vineyards, all terraced and in their neat rows. We did make it back to the Boat in time to go on the tour of the town, but they are too slow for us and give way too much information which one can’t take in, so after a while, we took off again and did our own thing. The town is very ‘cute’ with narrow winding streets and the houses all set on the sides of the hills. One of the crew told us about an Austrian sausage, so he took us to the little kiosk nearby and we had  one…very nice too, so no lunch for us today. Besides grapes and wines, this town makes lots of Apricot preserves and wines. One of the guides we met later told us that the town is expensive to live in.

 Castle

 Great view