Cactus Wanderer

An Evening at the Palace........ We boarded our coaches at 5:15 for the drive into Vienna, a score of Cinderellas and their princes.  Everyone spiffed up a bit tonight for the event.  What passes for jewels are nestled in our slightly pleated cleavage and the men, tired from a long afternoon of sliding down the Wachau Valley in the sunshine, have made an effort in their jackets and ties. We are docked at Tulln and the ship will leave for Vienna as soon as our buses depart. Guide Emil fills us in on history and surroundings during the forty minute drive to Vienna.  How strange to be in a city, perhaps even a bit unnerving.  After Amsterdam we have been cocooned on our ship or visiting rather small places.  At least it seems they were small because we never went through much urban sprawl during our stay. Vienna is truly bustling under the sheen of a light rain.  We leave the buses and take a short walk to the Palais Pallavicini.  A man in black tie...

Melk....Welcome to Austria where they spend more on opera than the military.... We are docked on a wide stretch of the Danube.  The elevation here is higher with the river sculpting a swath through the heavily treed landscape. Our guides lead us on a path through the forest on our way to the Abbey at Melk.  Later on this morning we will wish we had taken bread crumbs with us.  Melk is a small place and without the tourism draw of the Abbey there would not be much here.  The town is charming with its narrow streets and traditional houses. We are visiting a working Abbey.  The complex is huge.  Thirty Benedictine monks are in residence but fifteen of them are busy administering the twenty-three parishes in their bishopric. Nine hundred students attend a secondary day school within the walls for a fee of 90 Euro.  The monks own 10,000 acres of land, the profits from their vineyard and forestry enterprises fund the order. O...

Monday in Passau..... River time, our clock while sailing, put us into Passau early.  We are in lower Bavaria near the Austrian border.  This is a very interesting city sitting on the confluence of three rivers: The Danube the Inn and the Ilz. The Danube is the longest of the three originating in the Black Forest. The Ilz wends for forty miles through the Bavarian forest, its waters blackish from it's marshy transit. Widest is the Inn whose headwaters in the Swiss Alps formed from glacial and snow melt bring it's green alluvial tint with it. We are berthed near the end of the old town where the Ilz joins the Danube from the north merging with the Inn at a lovely green park at the tip.  Here the different tones of the two bodies of water are distinct separated by the shimmy of their two currents meeting.  These are fast moving currents filled with eddies and whirlpools and drownings are not uncommon. Passau has a population of just over 50,000 of w...

Regensburg on the Danube...... We passed through a number of locks in the night, some of the deepest yet.  I know this because when I am hard at work writing at 11PM my WiFi disappears within the locks and I cannot download my photos.  Finally, I said Enough!  and went to bed.  I finished yesterday's post this morning after breakfast. Guide Julia gave us a briefing this morning that contrasted American and European ways of doing things.  It was very informative and ran the gamut from money to transportation, social mores to tipping and punctuation in monetary figures.  She, herself, speaks Romanian and English and has studied French and Italian.  Julia works as a guide for Tauck in the summer when her regular job in Newport Beach, where she has lived for twenty-three years, goes on hiatus. We have been very pleased with Tauck.  Whenever you are away from the mother ship of food for an extended period of time, Tauck just hands you cash to hav...