Wachau belongs to my favorite WHSs in Austria, and I visited already several times. My last visit was in Summer 2013, when I joint a cycling trip of my friends despite the fact: I hate cycling(!) so, I had to manage traveling by other ways. We traveled from Czechia by car through Waldviertel, which is a forested highland. The contrast of the typical Central-European landscape and the Mediterranean-like Danube valley is really impressive and somewhat surprising. Danube is fairly clean in Wachau and we enjoyed swimming, watching birds and even crayfish in clean waters. Even though there is quite busy traffic of both cars and bicycles along the river, it is always possible to escape to river beaches or to surrounding hills with picturesque views.

Well, Wachau is enjoyable even for persons suffering from an allergy to vineyard WHSs, because its OUV is not based solely on the vineyards. Besides the natural beauty of Danube river, I enjoyed villages and little towns such as Duernstein or Spitz (PHOTO-bottom: view from the castle ruin above Spitz). To say something negative about Wachau, I was a bit disappointed by Melk monastery. Due to the relatively wide valley around Melk, the monastery appearance from the river was not such monumental as I expected. Further, the Melk monastery is overcrowded by tourists and I had a feeling of tourist trap. In contrast to Melk, I enjoyed my visits to Krems (PHOTO-top) and Stein with their streets, old townhouses and 13th Century churches much more + reconstructed Gozzoburg in Krems as icing on the cake!