Linz, Austria -- April 4, 2022

We cruised through the night after passing through the Wachau Valley. When I woke up we were tied up in Linz, Austria it was still dark. Looking out our veranda stateroom window I saw a lighted bridge and a building that kept changing colors. I later found out it was the Technology Museum (unfortunately closed on Monday as were all other museums in the town.) Here’s what I saw from the cabin and from the wider space just outside the reception area.

I had no way of knowing that morning but this day was to be sunniest of the cruise. Chilly and windy—yes, but sunny!

This was to be a walking tour so no need to look for the bus.. Just had to find our guide who was holding up a red paddle with our group number on it. Viking was super organized and would deliver a printed schedule of the next day’s activities along with printed tickets for our excursions that assigned us to a group.

Notice the guide is weaing a lanyard with an “A” on it. Each of had a personal “GuideVox” device that we’d touch to our guide’s card. That would reprogram the device to only pick up our guide’s tour narration and deliver it to an an earpiece so we could hear the narration of the day’s tour and not pick up audio from the other groups’ guides.

The Linz tour was a 1 1/2 hour stroll first along the riverfront park and public area then cutting over a main highway and into the city’s Old Town. We stopped by a house Where Mozart lived and worked for a while. Then he took us to a main square and pointed out a trolley car that we could take if we wanted to go up the mountain above the town for a scenic view.

He described in detail how we could get to bakeries selling the town’s famed “Linzer torte” and also local coffee shops like the Cafe Traxlmayr where we could relax over a coffee and a serving of the pastry. At the tour’s conclusion Dail and I went to the histric cafe and were impressed by the quality of the coffee and the decor. It was a little unsettling in that historic atmosphere to see a blue 5-foot robot vacuum make its way between the two dining rooms.

Here’s what the small dining room looked like from our table. The robot came scooting out from behind the screen—it was multi-purpose and could carry small trays as well as vacuum. It was such a surprise to see it I failed to get a picture.

More fun at the coffee shop: we both ordered cappuccinos and Linzer torte, of course. When I added a teaspoon of sugar to my cup the smily face looked like it was wearing a face mask!

After coffee we easily found our way back to the ship for lunch. Later in the afternoon we decided to enjoy the upper deck where we discovered a putt putt golf setup as well as a shuffleboard game. Though beautiful and sunny it was still breezy. Dail wanted to reach her daily goal of 8,000 steps so we took a few laps on the walking track as well as trying out the golf and shuffleboard—unencumbered by knowledge of the rules of the game.

Here’s a link to my Linz Google photo album where you can see beautiful blue skies and the scenery of this attractive Austrian town. The Tourist Information Office has aerial views of the city as a floor covering—a great way to get a birds-eye view!.

After dinner two American opera singers entertained us in the lounge with Austrian operettas and (of course) tunes from “The Sound of Music”. They were really good!