The approach to Vienna took us past some historically curious towns and villages including the town where Richard the Lionheart had been imprisoned having been captured on his way back from the Crusades and held to ransom and a church (locked) that was a repository for the skulls of soldiers killed during the Napoleonic wars (see picture below for the somewhat macabre arrangement of these artefacts - all of which apparently had bullet holes).
For the most part these were reached via the bike rides arranged by the cruise although the boat also had its own collection of bikes for use of the passengers which I was able to take advantage of when we reached Vienna where I explored a manmade Island (now a popular Viennese weekend leisure destination created from the debris collected when they diverted the course of the Danube to prevent flooding of central Vienna during high-tides).
We had previously visited Vienna with the kids (during a very snowy Winter weekend) but we seized the chance to have a more leisurely exploration around the Imperial Palace and the Central Park (including the famous Ferris Wheel featured in the Third Man which A and had a ride on).
All 4 of us also went on a trip to a picturesque Vinyard in the hills overlooking Vienna where we treated to copious amounts of the local wine and ham and traditional music - not quite as grand as our visit to the State Opera the previous evening but certainly an interesting spectacle (although I suspect not quite as much of a spectacle as the Einsturzende Neubauten concert (falling down new buildings - a staple of my 1980s musical youth) who were apparently also performing in Vienna that weekend according to the lamppost advert I saw (see below)!
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