Danube River Cruise Vacation Part 4: Passau, Linz, and Krems

This post is the forth in a series about our Danube River Cruise vacation that happened this June 2024. Click here for the link to Part 1: Planning and Getting to Munich. Click here for the link to Part 2: Our Day in Munich. Click here for the link to Part 3: Harburg Castle, Rothenburg, Getting to Passau. This post will be about some of our cruise experiences, including the ports of Passau, Linz and Krems.  

After spending our first night on the Viking Ship Embla, it was time for the walking tour of Passau. Since the ship had moved up the river to the docks right at the old town, it was easy to get off the ship and assemble for the tour. We had already walked around the day before, but now we got the information about landmarks and history of the area from the tour guide. For all the free tours we were provided with a walkie talkie and earbuds, so it was easy to hear everything the tour guide said.

Passau is a medieval town known as the “City of Three Rivers”. The Inn, Danube and Ilz rivers all join at this location, which had a settlement as early as the year 739. In the past it was an important location for trade of salt, knives and sword blades. Not surprisingly, flooding happens here. The dates and high water levels of major floods are marked on a wall in Passau. A couple of weeks before we arrived the water was a little higher than the marker for 2002 in the next photo, above Wayne’s head. We are lucky the water receded dramatically by the time of our cruise.

Following are a couple of random photos I took while walking around.

The next photo shows a door that is a couple of feet up off the ground. That is so that the rich owner could get off his horse and step directly into the building.

There were quite a few medieval looking doors and windows.

We took a bus to the top of a hill on the other side of the river from the old town area. The Veste Oberhaus fortress there offers tours and an excellent view for a fee. We did not have enough time so we got what view we could without entering the fortress. There is a museum, youth hostel and restaurant at the site. Following is a photo of the fortress from the old town side of the river. I can’t remember much about it except that most of the yellow windows on the squarish building are fake. That is due to running out of money, and also for better protection from enemies.

The next photo is a view of Passau looking down from the fortress. The old town is on the land area where the Danube and Inn rivers join together. The water in the rivers are different colors. The Danube is blue. The Inn water is green, coming from the Alps. The Ilz is black, from a moorland. We could see the blue and green water separately as it merged.

The cruise ship left the port of Passau after lunch, heading for Linz, Austria. We had some time to relax and watch the scenery on the top deck of the boat as it sailed down the river in the afternoon. There is a putting green and herb garden on the top deck, in addition to a walking track, some tables and chairs, and lounge chairs.

I worked on my knitting a little, but I did not want to miss the scenery.

We arrived in Linz, Austria, in the evening. Our ship was parallel parked next to another Viking ship. In the following photo you can see the top decks of the two identical ships parked next to each other. The people in the ship on the outside have to walk through the lobby of the ship on the inside to get off on to land. Sometimes the ships park three deep.

Following is a photo of our “French balcony” cabin. There was a sliding door that opened to a glass panel that went part way up. At this port, the view out the sliding glass door was the cabin on another ship parallel parked one foot away. There were other times when we had a great view of the river.

The next morning was the walking tour of Linz.

Before the trip when we mentioned to my aunt that we would be going to Linz, she wondered if Linzer Torte is from there. Yes, it is. We saw references to this local dessert, and thought it might be served on the ship. Instead we were served another specialty of the area, Apricot Dumplings. We never actually ate any Linzer Torte.

Following are more random photos taken in Linz, Austria.

After dinner in the lounge on the ship there was entertainment of live classical music. We cast off at 11:00 pm for the next port of Krems, Austria.

The next morning we sailed for a couple of hours through the Wachau Valley, an especially scenic section of the Danube River with quite a few cool castles and picturesque towns.

We arrived in Krems, Austria, later that morning. Instead of a walking tour, we took a bus to Gottwieg Abbey. This place is from the 11th century, and is currently known for its library and also special apricot wine and juice. Samples were given out at the beginning of the tour.

The grounds at the Abbey were beautiful. The sign in the next photo included direction to a walking path that joins with or is part of the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

We had time to walk around on our own in the afternoon.

The ship left Krems late that evening for the next port of Vienna, Austria.

I might have broken this post up into two parts, and/or spent more time on it, but I have had a very busy last couple of weeks since we got home from the river cruise. We had our annual family reunion at our family cabin, which meant house guests and a bunch of activities. Now we are leaving on another vacation tomorrow, so this is going to have to do. It will be several more weeks until I am able to compose the final post(s) about the rest of our Viking River Cruise vacation, including the ports of Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest, and getting back home. Pardon any typos (or better, tell me so I can fix them later).