We started in Vienna, took a train to Passau where the Danube meets the Inn and Ilz and becomes a grown-up river, collected some bikes and followed the river downhill to Vienna. Our luggage magically overtook us each day and was waiting in our appointed hotel for our arrival.
The going was very flat which is one advantage of following a river and we passed through some wonderful scenery and charming Austrian villages which one would normally by-pass or ignore. We checked out cafes, ice cream parlours and some out-of-the-way churches some of which had suffered from the Baroque tendencies of the Counter-Reformation. We even visit the former Mauthausen work camp but that is an experience that one retains in one's own heart and mind.
Arriving in Vienna we had time to spend with friends and to visit some of the sights - it was too hot for the Hofburg or Schonbrunn Palaces - and then took an overnight train to Venice.
Why Venice when we went there last year? We needed a more restful holiday and we were in search of the atelier of William Henry Tyler, late Victorian sculptor who wrote letters from an address close to San Marco. Well, it was as good an excuse as any to go to Venice, as if one needed one.
It was hot - Italian hot - and the city was very full but we were visitors not tourists and so we ignored the other people and enjoyed ourselves in a city which is a never-ending series of serene aesthetic surprises.
The picture story is here or, if you can use flash, here
