We walked into Komarno last evening before dinner and saw some of the sites of the this historic town. There is a lovely town square where the buildings are well restored and painted with lots of restaurants around. It looks very inviting. You only have to go a street or two back though and the age and "wear and tear" are plainly visible. Dinner was at an italian restaurant where the food was quite good. This morning we left our lovely lodgings after a chat with our host at about 8:30am and it was already hot. Not much we can do about that except try and have our rides finish as early as possible when the temperature is this high. You leave town and it becomes rural almost immediately and we're back riding on the levee ... read more

Last night our hotel manager gave us some tips for dinner and we ended up going to the "Slovak Pub" for dinner. It was a very authentic local pub outside of Old Town. We had a share plate to start with which had 3 dishes, one was noodles, ones was something that looked (but didn't taste) like a ravioli, and the third I'm not sure what it was but it did have an unfamiliar taste to it. For main I had a goulash with home made bread while Jeff and Tom both had potato dumplings filled with some sort of meat (pork I think). It's great to taste the local cuisine and it's always good to know if you can't find anything you like there's always a pizza place wherever you go. Today we literally hugged ... read more

Our last full day in Vienna. We have plans to do lots of things both ride related and leisure related. I doubt we'll get them all done. I'm fast out of the blocks, up early to have breakfast and work on the bike. It needed a good clean but I also needed to swap my front and back tyres around as the front tyre has a wider profile. I was done and dusted by 9:00am, a good start. Jeff had on his list to get some rim tape at a bike shop, patch a couple of tubes and rotate his front and rear tyres to even out the wear - none of which was done before we all left for the city about 10:30am. Tom, having just arrived had nothing to do on his bike. What ... read more

No alarm set for this morning as we'll be in Vienna well before our check-in time. We have a very leisurely breakfast and have a chat to two Americans who are riding the length of the Danube. They're thinking about coming to do some riding in Australia and asked if Darwin was a good place to start. Hopefully we've set them straight. We ride out of Tulln just after 9am and make our way to the river which will take us all the way to Vienna. Just after we leave Tulln behind we see a girl riding in front of us with a jersey that says Australia on her back. We both look t each other and think, great an other Aussie to talk to. Leena was actually German and her friend had given her the ... read more

Per chance there was a concert on at the Abbey last night entitled "Game of Thrones". Musical scores from TV and film mostly, played to the organ and Violoncello. The artists were two brothers. The concert was in the Abbey church and was esquisite. While the music was amazing, it also gave me another chance to visit that amazing church again. Today was another short ride, just 42kms to Krems an der Donau. We were away just after 8am, well fed from breakfast and enjoying the cooler air of the morning. We back tracked a little to cross a bridge over the Danube before turning east on the north bank heading towards Krems. We have been speculating about how wide the Danube is. Today we measured it with our bike computers while crosg the bridge and ... read more