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Visiting Melk and Krems traveling from Salzburg to Vienna with luggage

We are traveling to Austria in July. We will begin our stay in Salzburg for three nights with a side trip to Munich. We are flying from Vienna to Salzburg, but would like to return by train. However we would love to have a side trip to visit the Melk Abby and take the short river boat cruise to Krems. Is this possible with luggage? I thought about storing the luggage at the Melk train station and then backtracking to by bus to retrieve our luggage. Do you have any suggestions? Are we better of to hire a guide for our return trip and that way we will have our luggage covered? I also thought about spending the night in Krems, but that would still leave the luggage issue from Melk to Krems. We also could return direct to Vienna and then do this as a side trip. We have a large party of nine traveling.

Posted by
487 posts

My husband and I did a similar trip a couple years ago with luggage and it was not an issue. We started in Salzburg, took the train to Melk, visited the Abbey, and then got on the boat to Krems and took the train to Vienna. We carried our luggage, one large backpack and a personal bag each and did not have any issues. The Abbey has locker storage outside the entrance. On the boat we found seats on the upper deck and just kept our bags with us and did not have any problems. If you had a lot of luggage it might be more of a hinderance. Hope this helps.

Posted by
16893 posts

Seating areas on these boats are open and flexible enough that you can find a place to stash luggage. Being able to handle your luggage in a variety of situations on the road is the primary reason to pack light!

Posted by
5362 posts

I go to the Wachau frequently as it is one of my favorite places in Austria. You would really be doing yourselves a diservice if you only went to Melk Abbey and the boat ride to Krems. There are so many lovely villages (Spitz, Weissenkirchen and Durnstein, for example) that you would pass by on the boat. I also consider a stop in the Wachau on the way from Salzburg to Vienna to be quite a detour. Personally, I would do the Wachau as a day trip from Vienna, giving you much more time to explore. The direct train from Salzburg to Vienna is 2 hours 20 minutes, so very quick and easy. Doing the Wachau as a day trip also allows you to visit on a day when the weather is good.

I recommend that the day trip start with the train ride to Melk, visit the abbey if you wish (I am fine wtih just looking at the exterior), take the boat to Durnstein, have an apricot dumpling on the terrace of the Richard Lionheart hotel, hike up to the fortress for great views, buy some wine and apricot jelly, get on the WL1 bus to Krems for 20 minutes and get on the train back to Vienna. Easy.

Posted by
64 posts

Several years ago we stopped in Melk. We stored out luggage in the lockers at the train station. After a short visit to Melk we rented bikes and took off for Krems. Highly recommend the north side of the river.
What a great experience. Spitz, Weisenkirchen, Durnstein - stopped for lunch in Spitz, wine at a small local place somewhere near Durnstein, and snacks at the Krems train station. From there we trained back to Melk with our bikes ( with a transfer at St Polten)
We left Melk around 9:30AM and were back to drop off our bikes by 6:00, picked up our luggage and headed for Linz ( CK next day.)
Sounds hectic but it was a truly relaxing and outstanding way to see the Wachau.