Krems was the destination of my first day of cycling. Rony, of course, has already been on the road for two weeks, so I'm the underdog here. We got on the road at about 10 am and had a surprisingly easy time getting out of the city (which we had been dreading).

The first interesting stretch after riding out of the city was the winding road up through the Vienna Woods. I don't know the tree type, but they were very tall with whitish bark, and no branches or leaves except at the very top. The trunks were widely and evenly spaced with very little undergrowth, growing on fairly steep slopes. A very peaceful and undisturbed area.

Coasted down the other side of the hill and had lunch at Tulln. Tulln was our very first glimpse of the Danube, unfortunately none of the restaurants had views of the water. A fine lunch of spaghetti for me, ham and eggs for Rony, washed down with a half liter of mineral water with red wine.

We wound our way through some bike paths that threatened to follow the Danube, but mostly ended up going on little roads through pastures. On one of them Rony's tire went flat and she was rescued by a gallant gentleman (55) who quickly fixed her tire, took her to a bar to wash her hands, and bought her a spritzer (white wine w/seltzer?). More booze, nice riding.

Cruised on to Krems, stayed in the youth hostel there. A big place, with no outstanding features. Had a very nice dinner on a lovely outdoor terrace, surrounded by a grapevines with tiny grapes above and around. I had a gemuseplatte (veggies), she had chicken snitzel, also some nice whipped-cream pastries.

The nicest features in the town were the gateways into the shopping streets, as shown on the front of the postcard.