Day-To-Day Itinerary
Daily distances and exact overnight destinations depend on category of hotels and length of tour booked. All distances are approximate.
8 days/7 nights (Basic)
Day 1: Schärding/Passau
Day 2: Upper Danube Valley, 19 - 36 mi. (30 - 58 km)
Day 3: Upper Danube Valley - Linz, 31 - 41 mi. (50 - 65 km)
Day 4: Linz - Ardagger/Grein, 31 - 41 mi. (50 - 65 km)
Day 5: Ardagger/Grein - Wachau, 31 - 42 mi. (50 - 68 km)
Day 6: Wachau - Traismauer/Tulln region, 34 - 48 mi. (54 - 76 km)
Day 7: Traismauer/ Tulln - Vienna, 23 - 40 mi. (36 - 64 km)
Day 8: Individual departure
Day 1: Schärding/Passau
Individual arrival to the pretty baroque town Schärding am Inn or to the three-river-city Passau. Please specify your desired arrival place with your booking! If you book your tour beginning in Schärding, you will have a welcome meeting at the office of our partner, Austria Radreisen. You may go to the shop anytime before 4 pm. Here you will pick up your rental bike and receive your tour information. You will also cycle a longer distance on the first day. If you begin in Passau, your information and rental bikes will be delivered to the first hotel.
Please specify your desired arrival place with your booking! If you don’t mention your arrival place, we will automatically book Schärding for you.
Day 2: Schärding/Passau - Upper Danube Valley, 19 - 36 mi. (30 - 58 km)
From Schärding you cycle along the Inn cycle to Passau, where you can visit the cathedral with the largest church organ in the world. If you begin to Passau, you simply begin to cycle from there. Further east you reach the next highlight, the abbey of Engelszell, Austria's only Trappist monastery. If you would like to shorten your cycling distance today, from Passau, you can cover part of the distance by ship (mid-April till early October). You will receive more information about this in the travel information that will be waiting for you upon your arrival.
You can read more about this here.
Day 3: Upper Danube Valley - Ottensheim/Linz, 31 - 41 mi. (50 - 65 km)
Today’s first highlight is the Danube Loop of Schlögen or Schlögener Donauschlinge where the granite forces the river into an extremely tight loop. In Aschach, the valley widens and you cycle through the fertile basin of Eferding. The baroque Monastery of Wilhering is the perfect place to rest before you reach the cultural city of Linz.
Overnight in Linz or if you book Category C accommodations, overnight could be in Ottensheim.
Day 4: Ottensheim/Linz - Ardagger/Grein, 31 - 41 mi. (50 - 65 km)
As you leave Linz, you cycle through a rural landscape. In Mauthausen, the concentration camp memorial testifies to a dark chapter in history. In the mariner town of Grein, the Greinburg Castle, perched on its hilltop, is a highlight, as well as oldest city theater in Austria and the Maritime Museum.
Overnight accommodation in Ardagger/Grein region. Category C accommodations can also be in Wallsee/Mitterkirchen.
Day 5: Ardagger/Grein - Wachau, 31 - 42 mi. (50 - 68 km)
Through romantic Strudengau, you cycle to the ancient Roman town of Ybbs, where the undulating landscape of the Nibelungengau begins. From a distance, you can see the pilgrimage church of Maria Taferl which towers over the Danube valley. In Melk, the Benedictine Abbey is a highlight and of course the entire Wachau Region, as well.
Accommodation in the region between Maria Taferl and Spitz.
Day 6: Wachau - Traismauer/Tulln region, 34 - 48 mi. (54 - 76 km)
Today you experience the most beautiful part of your journey, the picturesque Wachau. Pedaling through emerald vineyards and lush orchards, you discover Dürnstein. You can shorten this cycling stage by ship through the Wachau (approx. mid-April till mid-October). Worth seeing is the historic center of Krems with its arcaded courtyards and baroque townhouses. The day's destination is Traismauer/Tulln. There is also the possibility to overnight in Krems. If this is the case, you will then cycle 76 km to Vienna but this can be shortened by train.
Day 7: Vienna, 23 - 40 mi. (36 - 64 km)
Near Vienna, the valley narrows again and leads through Klosterneuburg and into the region of Vienna, famous for its café culture and its many sights. You can discover the city in a fiacre ride and end with a leisurely evening at a Heurigen (wine tavern).
Day 8: Departure
You can book additional nights in Vienna and enjoy the Vienna package or a guided city tour by bike for you. An extension to Bratislava is also possible.
7 days/6 nights (Sport version)
Day 1: Schärding/Passau
Individual arrival to the pretty baroque town Schärding am Inn or to the three-river-city Passau. Please specify your desired arrival place with your booking! If you book your tour beginning in Schärding, you will have a welcome meeting at the office of our partner, Austria Radreisen. You may go to the shop anytime before 4 pm. Here you will pick up your rental bike and receive your tour information. You will also cycle a longer distance on the first day. If you begin in Passau, your information and rental bikes will be delivered to the first hotel.
Day 2: Upper Danube Valley
Day 3: Upper Danube Valley - Enns
Day 4: Enns - Marbach/Maria Taferl
Day 5: Marbach/Maria Taferl - Krems/Traismauer
Day 6: Krems/Traismauer - Vienna
Day 7: Individual departure or extension of trip
*Daily distances from 37 mi. to 50 mi. (60 - 80 km)
9 days/8 nights (Relax version)
Day 1: Schärding/Passau
Individual arrival to the pretty baroque town Schärding am Inn or to the three-river-city Passau. Please specify your desired arrival place with your booking! If you book your tour beginning in Schärding, you will have a welcome meeting at the office of our partner, Austria Radreisen. You may go to the shop anytime before 4 pm. Here you will pick up your rental bike and receive your tour information. You will also cycle the longer distance on the first day. If you begin in Passau, your information and rental bikes will be delivered to the first hotel.
Day 2: Upper Danube Valley
Day 3: Linz/surroundings
Day 4: Ardagger/Grein/surroundings
Day 5: Marbach/Maria Taferl/Melk surroundings
Day 6: Wachau region
Day 7: Traismauer/Tulln/surroundings
Day 8: Vienna
Day 9: Individual departure or extension of trip
*Daily distances from 25 mi. to 41 mi. (40 - 65 km)
10 days/9 nights (Enjoy version)
Day 1: Schärding/Passau
Individual arrival to the pretty baroque town Schärding am Inn or to the three-river-city Passau. Please specify your desired arrival place with your booking! If you book your tour beginning in Schärding, you will have a welcome meeting at the office of our partner, Austria Radreisen. You may go to the shop anytime before 4 pm. Here you will pick up your rental bike and receive your tour information. You will also cycle the longer distance on the first day. If you begin in Passau, your information and rental bikes will be delivered to the first hotel.
Day 2: Upper Danube Valley
Day 3: Aschach/Linz/surroundings
Day 4: Enns
Day 5: Ardagger/Grein
Day 6: Marbach/Maria Taferl/Melk/surroundings
Day 7: Weißenkirchen/Krems/surroundings
Day 8: Tulln/surroundings
Day 9: Vienna Day
10: Individual departure or extension of trip
*Daily distances from 25 to 31 mi. (35 - 50 km)
11 days/10 nights (Enjoy version with an extra day in the Wachau region
Day 1: Schärding/Passau
Individual arrival to the pretty baroque town Schärding am Inn or to the three-river-city Passau. Please specify your desired arrival place with your booking! If you book your tour beginning in Schärding, you will have a welcome meeting at the office of our partner, Austria Radreisen. You may go to the shop anytime before 4 pm. Here you will pick up your rental bike and receive your tour information. You will also cycle the longer distance on the first day. If you begin in Passau, your information and rental bikes will be delivered to the first hotel.
Day 2: Upper Danube Valley
Day 3: Upper Danube Valley - Aschach/Linz/surroundings
Day 4: Aschach/Linz - Enns
Day 5: Enns - Ardagger/Grein
Day 6: Ardagger/Grein - Marbach/Maria Taferl/Melk/surroundings
Day 7: Marbach/Maria Taferl/Melk/surroundings - Weißenkirchen/Krems/surroundings
Day 8: Day off in Weißenkirchen/Krems/surroundings
Day 9: Weißenkirchen/Krems/surroundings - Tulln/surroundings
Day 10: Tulln/surroundings - Vienna
Day 11: Individual departure or extension of trip
*Daily distances from 25 to 31 mi. (35 - 50 km)
12 days/11 nights
Day 1: Schärding/Passau
Individual arrival to the pretty baroque town Schärding am Inn or to the three-river-city Passau. Please specify your desired arrival place with your booking! If you book your tour beginning in Schärding, you will have a welcome meeting at the office of our partner, Austria Radreisen. You may go to the shop anytime before 4 pm. Here you will pick up your rental bike and receive your tour information. You will also cycle the longer distance on the first day. If you begin in Passau, your information and rental bikes will be delivered to the first hotel.
Day 2: Upper Danube Valley
Day 3: Upper Danube Valley - Aschach/Linz/area
Day 4: Aschach/Linz - Enns
Day 5: Enns - Ardagger/Grein
Day 6: Ardagger/Grein - Marbach/Maria Tafer area
Day 7: Marbach/Maria Tafer area - Melk area
Day 8: Melk area - Dürnstein/Krems/surroundings
Day 9: Rest day in Dürnstein/Krems/surroundings
Day 10: Dürnstein/Krems/surroundings - Tulln/surroundings
Day 11: Tulln/surroundings - Vienna
Day 12: Individual departure or extension of trip
Daily distances from 19 - 26 (30 - 42 km)
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Pricing Information
Travel Details
This tour is run by Austria RadReisen.
We value the strong relationship we have with our local partners and the services we provide.
We are not a broker.
We do not inflate tour prices.
We are simply travelers helping travelers.
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Tour Reviews
Tom H. 2 weeks ago Verified Reviewer
Great trip this segment of the Danube cycle path is nearly 100% paved and very smooth. It is relatively easy to follow the cycle path route markings. The GPS maps I was sent did not work for this segment. They worked fine from regensburg to passau so probably not user error. The cycle path is really popular with cyclists but never too crowded even though not everyone has good bike handling skill so you need to pay attention. Maps provided to hotels are not very good however people I talked to with other trip companies had the same issues and in several different languages people we met were helpful and anxious to provide
information. Hotels were all very pleasant and comfortable even though it was very hot and they did not have air conditioning.
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John M. 2 months ago Verified Reviewer
Most memorable was riding through the small towns. Tips and suggestions: It was a little confusing how to leave the bike at the end of the trip, whether to lock it or not, would it be safe until returned to Austria Radreisen. We locked ours in the hotel inside parking spaces and left the key inside the panniers which we left in the hotel office. The hotel choice was good except in Linz it was very difficult to get there by bike; it was a big hotel and we would have preferred a guest house. The food was very good eating in hotel dining rooms everywhere except Traismauer where dinner was not available at the hotel. The "Danube Bike Trail" booklet provided by Cycline is a little confusing to read. We used a off-line map application (Locus) to find our way. I would have preferred a lighter bike and a single sided kickstand would have been better than the heavy double Read more… sided one. The booklet provided by Austria Radreisen contained a post-trip survey that had to be mailed in to them by post; there should have been a way to submit it by email and hence we did not complete that survey.
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Stan Carr 4 months ago Verified Reviewer
A. Here are our suggestions for anyone looking at the tour options for Passau to Vienna.
1. Don’t ever sign up for the “Sport” version of the tour because it requires 50+ miles every day, and leaves no time for exploring or resting.
2. If you are doing the self-guided trail, do yourself a favor and get the e-bikes. The bikes given to us were really inadequate for the distances.
3. Consider doing the bike & boat option rather than biking the whole way. The reasons? If on a boat, you won’t have to pack and unpack every day; You won’t have to search for the hotel in the evening, and you can look forward to relaxing on a boat every night. Another big plus is that from the shoreline, you often cannot get a good perspective on the scenery. When the cliffs rise overhead and you are below, you can’t see them at all. And you may be able to Read more… avoid some of the on-road biking that we encountered.
B. Here are the things we liked about the Tripsite planning and execution:
1. They booked all of the hotels and moved our bags every day. The hotel choices were excellent and the hotel owners all served good meals and provided nice rooms.
2. There were no surprise expenses.
3. Tripsite pretty much delivered what they promised.
C. Here are the things we did not like about the Tripsite planning and execution:
1. The materials and the bikes were delivered on the first morning of the trip. The trail book has lots of detail and routes on both sides of the river. Receiving the book as you are departing for a 350 mile journey is ridiculous. The company who publishes the maps (esterbauer.com) probably could provide a PDF far in advance.
2. The trail map was outdated. We encountered sections, starting on day 1, where the trail signs said the trail ended. Several times we were traveling on busy highways with no bike lane, no shoulder, and with semi-trucks screaming past us. On one section, we had to peddle for several km on soft sand past the trail closed signs, because the alternative was riding on an autobahn-type highway.
3. We purchased the Komoot iPhone app with the trail, thinking it would help us. Sometimes it did help. Other times, it tried to route us onto busy roads. It does not work well for this kind of trip, because the hotels are not on the route. We used Komoot to help get us from the trail to the hotels and Google Maps worked at least as well. I think Komoot is a good product, but not implemented well for this application.
4. During our entire trip, we encountered very strong headwinds that made progress painful. We expected that 21-speed bikes would be ok, but the gearless bikes performed very much like 7-speed bikes and is the source of complaints from others too. We concur. We should have ordered E-bikes.
5. On the second day, we called and asked to replace our bikes with e-bikes. Rad-Reisen called back and essentially said it would not be convenient for them to make the change. Trying to ride 50 miles into a strong headwind with the equivalent of a 7-speed bike is not good. I was sometimes limited to 11-14 km/hr (7-9 mph) because of the wind.
6. We signed up for a bike-tour of Vienna and stayed an extra day in Vienna. That day there were 25,000 runners in the Vienna Marathon, so we asked to cancel the tour. We found that the tour had already been cancelled for us, but we did not know it.
D. Summary.
We have been traveling to Europe for many years and we are experienced with the logistics. Tripsite and Rad-Reisen are both good companies who are working to provide great experiences for travelers. We made some bad choices when we planned the trip and those were compounded by weather and equipment. It would have been better if Tripsite challenged our choice of a “Sport” trip, and if they provided the biking materials in advance. I support the Tripsite service as a valuable one for travelers. Our lesson: when planning a bike trip, take extra days and make sure to leave time for exploring.
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Jennifer B. 8 months ago Verified Reviewer
I loved riding through Grein and the Wachau Valley, just beautiful!
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Darryl S. 9 months ago Verified Reviewer
We enjoyed the relaxed pace, mingling with local village people and enjoying what Austria and Germany had to offer. The guides for the bike route were excellent, we had local people enjoying the bike paths with us and gave us a chance to practice our german. The accommodation and meals were of a high standard, after a day in the saddle the "Hugo" cocktails where very refreshing to end the day.
Thank you Tripsite for a great holiday.
Darryl and Brigitte
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Jerline S. 11 months ago Verified Reviewer
Fantastic trip!!! Everything went smoothly. Want to return and spend extra days in some of the places!
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Florence B. 12 months ago Verified Reviewer
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Carla 9 months ago Staff
Hello Florence -
Thank you for your feedback. I am sorry about the confusion about the arrival meeting. As it states in our day-to-day information, an arrival meeting is based on your starting city. As you specifically requested start in Passau, there is no meeting included. We can, on request, try to organize this (for future reference). I cannot explain why you thought you had been given 7-speed bicycles. Our newer Bosch step-less gear bicycles had been delivered to you, which are not 7-speed bicycles. I'm sorry you were not satisfied with our bicycles. It's good to keep in mind that bicycles used on these tours are very good quality, but may be a bit heavier than what you are used to at home.
Thank you again for your feedback. I hope we can assist you with your next cycling adventure and we'll do our best to avoid any surprises!
Kind Regards,
Carla at Tripsite
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Diane W. 1 year ago Verified Reviewer
The beautiful scenery along the river was the most memorable part of the trip. We also loved all the little cafes right by the path for lunch and breaks.
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Maxine W. 1 year ago Verified Reviewer
We four had a blast biking thru vineyards. Nice flat well marked path.
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Maxine W. 1 year ago Verified Reviewer
We four had a blast biking thru vineyards. Nice flat well marked path.
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Sean B. 2 years ago Verified Reviewer
Most Memorable Part: Staying at the Hotel Schloss Durnstein
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