Durnstein, the Wachau Valley and Melk

Once again a champagne breakfast and then a walking tour of Durnstein.
Only Joe went on the walking tour of Durnstein as the other 3 were too hung over to go.
Durnstein is a small picturesque town with a population of 281.
A store in the town creates jewellery from Danube River pebbles.  Joe checked out the jewellery for Bonnie and bought her a most beautiful necklace made from a stone from the Danube River.
It is just lovely and much appreciated.  So Bonnie will always have a piece of the Danube River with her.  What a guy!

They grow apricots and make excellent jam as well as apricot brandy.

The pictures show some of the highlights of the town.

And of course we have a cathederal.

We left Durnstein at 10:45AM to sail through the beautiful Wachau Valley on our way to Melk.
The pictures below are of the valley, taken from the front of the ship.

This picture is the Melk Abby that we will visit this afternoon.

Wonderful experience in the Abby looking at the Baroque construction.

The Benedictine Abby has over 80,000 printed books in the library and magnificent views or the Danube area.

The first picture below is our ship which was hard to capture as it is so long.

After the visit we headed for the lounge for a wine tasting experience. We certainly managed to experience lots of wine. It was a great time with all the local wines.

Dinner time was, as usual, exceptional.

We met our friends, Robin and John from New Zealand and June and Sonya from Alberta.

We thought we should have a word of the day from now on and decided todays word would be "spontaneity". It is a word that was inspired by Sonya.

After Dinner we headed for the lounge for after dinner drinks and to listen to the excellent music by Stephan.

A lot of folks were dancing and we saw an exceptional dancer named Peter who asked Sonja to dance. 

What an amazing couple they made as you can see.

Tomorrow we are off to Passau, Germany. Stayed tuned for the exciting events.