Blue Danube Part 2

Day 3 We had the choice of either visiting the Austrian Lake District or the city of Salzburg. I chose the latter as I have heard very good things about this city. Safe to say I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

On the way we had short visit to Mondsee. A pretty little village set lakeside which houses it’s most famous sight. The 15th-century parish church which featured in the wedding scenes from ‘The Sound of Music’

From here we then travelled to one of Austria’s most famous cities which is known as the birth place of Mozart, Salzburg. Here you can see city’s internationally reknown baroque architecture, A UNESCO World Heritage Site. This city is easily explored on foot and all the major sites such as the house where Mozart grew up before moving into large premises, due to the amount of visitors he would regularly welcome to hear his music.

The city itself is very pretty and I personally would love to visit during the winter months especially around Christmas time. It really would be magical. We then left Salzburg to head back to Passau where we would re-board the boat. Unfortunately due to low river levels we were unable to finish our journey by river to Regensburg. This was dealt with promptly and efficiently by Rob the Tour manager who arranged coaches to transfer us the following morning and those that didn’t want to do the longer coach journey, were offered regular coaches into the centre of Passau. This ensured that there were no unhappy passengers, after all not much can be done about river levels!

Regensburg is a medieval town which was a trading centre for the whole of the region from the 9th century on-wards. Again beautiful architecture and plenty to explore by foot.

That evening was the one we had all looked forward to. The Captain’s Gala dinner. This gave us all the chance to dress to impress and a chance for us to meet and thank all the staff that had looked after us on-board. The dinner didn’t disappoint as again the food was just unbelievable. For me the best food I have had at sea or by river!

The next morning we began our long journey home. We got to experience the rail journey all the way back to the UK. I have to say this was surprisingly comfortable and all trains ran like clockwork….until I got back to the UK! We caught a train from Passau to Frankfurt where we changed to catch a train to Brussels, before finally boarding the Eurostar back to St Pancras where the delays started!

Overall I had an amazing experience on my first river cruise. The standards on-board were fantastic, great service and amazing food whilst visiting some fantastic places. I highly recommend Great Rail Journeys and if you haven’t experienced a river cruise before, you don’t know what you are missing!

Till next time

James