It was time to escape Vienna and see the suburbs.  We were attracted to the town of Krems, as it's the "center" of the Wacau wine trade in Austria.   For breakfast, we picked up a coffee and apple streudel just outside our hotel lobby.   While Jaimie is overwhelmed by the pastry shops (not a big fan of them), I enjoy a pastry shop every 30 feet.  They're never that far from reach (granted, it seems that Anker seems to be a chain here, and has the market cornered on pastry shops, offering the same selection over and over :)).  

Anyways, after getting breakfast to go, we were off to one of the three Vienna train stations.  We were cutting it close, so we couldn't make any mistakes.   We left at 10:10am for the 10:45am train.    We had to switch subway trains and that was our big mistake, we missed the 2nd train by just a few seconds, and had to wait 9 minutes for the next one.  That pretty much cost us a delay, along with some station finding issues.    We had to wait for an hour by the train station for the next train.   We walked around north eastern Vienna to pass the time.  There wasn't much up there - we stopped in a supermarket for a yogurt drink.   It's been interesting making our way from Turkey to Austria.   The supermarkets were like tiny general stores in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, and gradually became larger as we entered the EU, and almost back to normal (maybe about 1/4 of the size of the US stores) now that are in "the West" :).   We miss the simplicity of regular supermarkets! :)  Just one more day and we're back to having everything you'd ever want in the supermarkets.

After our wait, we boarded the local train to Krems.  It was an hour long ride, but went by quickly.  When we arrived, we walked about a 1/2 mile to where our guide book had listed a local place we could taste wines.   On the way, we traversed the main pedestrian walkway through town, lined with shops, and stopped for lunch.  Locating food was difficult, as there weren't any English menus anywhere.    We saw spaghetti and salads on a menu, which attracted us.   We ended up sharing a small pizza, which was pretty good.    I, at least, am looking forward to having fewer Pizza's in the next few months :).

From lunch, we continued on through a castle style gate entryway, and just a few feet away, we found ourselves in the tasting room of Weingut der Statd Krems.   The wine pourer spoke English (thankfully - we didn't want to have to sign tasting :)).  She let us taste every wine we wanted (5).  Austria is known for it's Veltling and Reisling wines.  Both of which are white, fruity, and sweet wines.  We're not big on the fruity stuff, so it wasn't a big hit.  They did have one red wine, which we thought tasted pretty good (a bit peppery), so we purchased it for $8 - 2004 Weingut Stadt Krems Zweigelt.   We were happy the tasting was so easy, thanked the person helping us (we were the only ones there), and left.

Moving along, we headed to the next destination in our guide book, Kloster Und.   Kloster Und was more a very contemporary shop selling wine than a winery tasting house.  We were disappointed to find that it sold wine by the glass instead of offering tastings.  We both had half glasses of different wines, for about $5 total.  Luckily, we loved one of our half glasses, and bought 2 bottles of Schiefer Winery's 2004 Blaufrankisch (Spicy red).   We're going to bring these 2 home with us (they taste great :).   We did want to open one of the bottles, and relax in the atmosphere of Kloster Und, but they told us it would be $8 for drinking it there, as they had to "wash the glasses".  We laughed, as they already had one glass dirty, but decided it wasn't worth the $8, and just left.

That was pretty much all this town had to offer from a wine perspective (at least that we knew of).   We had a bit higher of an expectation as this was supposedly the "center" of the wine trade.  At least we had some tastings, a 1/2 glass each, and walked away with some good wine - all in all, not so bad of a day :).   We headed out of Kloster Und, and into one of the town's parks with a large fountain in the center.  We rested, and just hung out in the park for a while.   It was a bit chilly, compared to yesterday, so we didn't stay too long.  After enjoying the park, we walked along some of the tiny, curvy cobblestone streets of town, coming across a number buildings from the 14th to 17th centuries (many of the buildings in town have the date they were built on the front).    Krems has many churches, and we enjoyed their architecture as well, as we passed along the streets.

We caught the 4pm train back, headed back to our hotel, and enjoyed the bottle of Stadt Krems' Zweigelt (red wine).   After relaxing, we took off to an Indian restaurant.  It was just a few blocks from our hotel, and was delicious (what Indian restaurant isn't!).   We topped off the night with our last glasses of Zweigelt.   Of course, if you're wondering, we have mixed emotions of tomorrow being our last day on our trip.  Today is my last entry from abroad.   Sad to end our world travelling days (for now of course), but happy to go home, see our cats, and have some home cooked meals (not to mention Spiedies - a Binghamtom NY recipe, and Breyers Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream for me :).  You can read more in our "wrapping up the world" on Sunday.  

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