Danube bike path (classic tour)

Day 1: Individual arrival in Passau/ Danube Valley
Arrive in Passau, the City of Three Rivers, at the confluence of the Inn, Ilz and Danube Rivers. If you’d like, take a sightseeing tour around the city and the cathedral, where you might hear a concert on the world’s largest church organ. A representative of the bike tour company will meet you at your hotel to distribute your bikes and make sure they fit and to hand out travel materials. He will discuss your program and route and answer all questions you might have.

Day 2: Passau/ Danube Valley - Aschach (42/26 miles)
After you leave your luggage in the lobby, you climb aboard your bikes for your first day of riding along the Danube. You pass the charming town of Engelhartszell with its unique Trappist monastery and breathtakingly beautiful rococo church.
The monastery also makes its own brandies, which you might pick up for later consumption. After riding through granite massifs, you enter an opulent green landscape and soon you come to Schlögen, where the Danube rounds a nearly 270-degree bend. Further to Aschach.

Day 3: Aschach - Enns/surrounding (24 miles)
With added distance (about 10 miles), you can ride to St. Florian, a small Danube town dominated by its Augustine Abbey, recognized as one of the finest baroque buildings in Europe.
Beyond its architectural splendor, St. Florian also contains the so-called “Bruckner Organ” with its 7,386 pipes. Organist and composer Anton Bruckner played the organ and is buried in a crypt beneath it. Behind Bruckner's tomb, more than 6,000 skeletons are stacked in neat rows. Monks have served in the abbey since 1071.
You continue past two medieval castles to the Enns River and head a few miles upstream to Enns, the oldest city in Austria. Enns is postcard-perfect with its medieval tower and fortifications and its Renaissance and Baroque façades.

Day 4: Enns/surrounding - Persenbeug/ Maria Taferl (42 miles)
Past Enns, a winding road overlooking the Danube ends starkly at the concentration camp in Mauthausen. From 1938 until the Allied liberation seven years later, 110,000 prisoners died, most of hunger, disease and exhaustion from working the adjacent quarries.
The memory of its terrors stands in tragic counterpoint to the landscape below. This is an optional side-trip, and the experience is emotionally wrenching.

Day 5: Persenbeug/ Maria Taferl - Krems(40 miles)
You follow the Danube around a tight curve and travel a short distance to another tour highlight: the Melk Abbey. Melk marks the official start of the Wachau, Austria's most famous wine-growing region. Vineyards stretch up the sides of the valley, and wine villages lie along the river as well as in the neighboring hills.
The Benedictine Abbey, a magnificent baroque structure built between 1702 and 1736, surrounds seven courtyards and stretches 1,065 from end to end. Take a tour of the abbey and the adjacent English landscape garden.
In Spitz, in the heart of the Wachau, you can make a short hike to the ruins of the Hinterhaus castle and look across to the Tausendeimerberg - the Mountain of a Thousand Buckets - where vineyards are carved into hillside terraces.
You soon reach Krems, which you enter through its impressive Stone Gate. The 1000-year-old town is surrounded by vineyards and filled with historic buildings - including churches, monasteries and fortifications. It's also a lively town with cafés, shops and bistros.

Day 6: Krems - Tulln/ Vienna (29/53 miles)
You travel along dams, locks and trails as the valley broadens and flattens.
Here the river flows off into oxbows and meanders, and the setting often feels more like remote wetlands (with ample wildlife) than one of the world’s mightiest rivers. In Tulln, known as the “Flower City,” enjoy a ride along the medieval town walls and look for relics from Roman times.
You pass Klosterneuburg with its imposing monastery and reach the metropolis Vienna. (It`s also possible to shorten the stage by train - optional).

Day 7: Departure or extension in Vienna