Wachau Wine Region
9/12/2025
We took a train to Melk which is a super cute town on the Danube about an hour east of Vienna. My darling husband found a company based in Krems (about 40 km north of Melk) that was willing to drop ebikes in Melk for us so we could ride one way from Melk to Krems along the Danube, then drop the bikes at their office in Krems. It was perfect!
We arrived in Melk at about 9:20 and checked out the town and snapped a couple photos. Unfortunately, we had a really cloudy day, so none of the photos for the entire day really do it justice.
We visited the Melk Abby which was pretty impressive. It started as a castle that the emperor gifted to the Benedictine monks in the 11th century to use as a monestery. It was rebuilt in the early 1700’s after a fire, and that is the structure we see today. Through the years it also served as a school and to date it is an active monastery and school. It has been continuously inhabited and run by monks since 1089!
We got pictures from the terrace and throughout much of the abbey, but the most beautiful parts were the library and the church - which were also the only two spaces that taking photos was prohibited.
We then walked down to the river and found where our e-bikes were waiting for us. Note – if you are planning a trip to this area, you can also do this adventure by boat, but, of course, you can’t make all the random stops we were able to on bikes. I think there is one town (Durnstein) that you can stop at from the boat.
The bike route in the Wachau wine region runs along the Danube and is relatively flat. Parts of it are similar to a greenway trail, and parts go through little towns and villages. We rode the north bank of the river which was kind of a pain to figure out how to get over to initially. But Grady did lots of research and had it all figured out! I just followed! 😊 The first several miles weren’t anything special, so he rode fast to get to the prettier terrain. And I just chased him as best as I could. It was a bit like riding with Rex and Lori down in Florida (chasing Rex)!
Once we started seeing vineyards, castle ruins, and better views of the river, I convinced him to slow down a touch. There were a few areas I would have loved to have stopped to get a few photos, but I knew I would never catch him again if I stopped! I did the best I could with pictures! We wound through some incredibly cute towns and hit several fantastic Heurigers (wineries) along the way. Some of the views were really incredible. Parts of it reminded us a little of the Douro Valley in Portugal (which was one of my favorite scenic rides along a river ever).
Once we arrived in Krems, we dropped off our e-bikes and had to get straight to the train station to catch our train back to Vianna, so we didn’t see Krems at all. This trip would be a great trip to do over 2 days! You could ride the north bank of the river one day and the south bank the second day and stay overnight in either Krems or Melk. It would have been fun to spend a little more time in some of the little towns along the way, and I would have loved to have had time to park the bikes and hike up to some of the castle ruins. Maybe next time! 😊
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