Darren: Our hotel room in Melk had a balcony and looked out over the street below. Turned out to be good and bad. Nice view and fun to see the town from above but bad when it got late or wee hours early and people were still in those streets, laughing and yelling. We made the best of it, of course, but it got a bit noisy. When we checked in we noticed a man outside barbequing some ribs. Turns out they were serving them at our hotel’s restaurant that night. We ate there that night. Yum!! We walked down by the Danube river that night and got some fresh air. We had to share that air with a few hundred mosquitoes though… yikes.

We went on a river boat ride on the Danube river. It’s a 24-mile stretch between the towns of Melk and Krems. It cuts through the beautiful Wachau Valley and we rode it up and back. We took some pictures of old castles and ruins along the way. One small town along the tour was Durnstein. Richard the Lion-Hearted was said to have been imprisoned here in 1193. You can still see the ruins of the castle where he was held high up on the hill above town.

I remember that we had some pizza that night (we miss Italy) and watched the Germany vs. Netherlands football match that night. It’s been fun getting into the whole World Cup Soccer thing.

Kim:  The Danube River cruise was fun. It gave us a chance to see some beautiful parts of the country in the Wachau Valley. Due to the extreme heat outside, Darren and I decided to buy some drinks onboard the boat. We saw an item listed as "bitter lemon" so thinking it would be lemonade we decided to try one. Bad choice! Lemonade it was not. Bitter lemon-water it was. Not exactly a thirst quencher. Ughh!