The Tour de Hapsburgs

I left the beautiful city of Prague and took the train to the pretty German city of Passau where I started my 8 day, approximately 500 mile cycle trip down the Danube to Budapest . Including Prague, my trip sort of covered the heart of the old Austrian -Hungarian or Hapsburg empire.  Not that the last real ruler of the A-H empire-

 (See Franz Joseph) a kind of hero of Uncle Joe’s - would not have approved of my cycling as, according to my Vienna tour guide, he opposed all modern inventions such bikes and the newfangled flush toilet ( preferring the old fashioned chamber pot, naturally emptied by servants).  

Anyway the initial segment of my cycling took me through some pretty Austrian countryside- 

On my second day of cycling, I ended up in the Austrian city of Linz where I found an old friend- 

An Austrian Biergarten.- a nice way to end a day of cycling  

In addition to cruise ships, You see a lot of these cycling along the wide Danube- 

 I passed by this pretty monastery on a hill (supposedly with a nice library)- 

After 4 days of cycling I ended up somewhere in Vienna  Like Prague, Vienna is a beautiful city and some may remember a few of those 

The Hapsburgs had a summer palace called the Hofburg which was kind of like their version of a lake house with a few more rooms-