Linz is also popular as a starting point for the many cruises along the Danube that eventually go to Vienna. This was our first sighting of the Danube, really our only because it's ignored in Vienna. In addition to the Danube connection, Linz is also famous as Hitler's hometown, but understandably the tourist office doesn't make a big deal about that. Other than that, Linz doesn't have any must see sights, and really not much to entertain you for long. In the photo of Linz by the river, if you look at the mountain above, there's an enormous church at the top that looked really amazing from afar, but we'll have to leave that for another trip.

A few shots of the empty Old Town. Linz is a provincial capital, and it's built like it would be a pretty bustling city, but I obviously can't vouch for that. One upside: I usually want to eat local food when traveling, but traditional Austrian food isn't really that appealing, especially every day. But everything was closed except of course for a Chinese restaurant, where we had one of our best meals of the trip.

16. Linz

One big negative about traveling at Christmas is everything's closed, so you end up with some time on your hands. With that as a background, we decided to take a day trip to Linz before we left for our final destination, Vienna. I think it was the day after Christmas, so I'm sure the city was unusually quiet, but this was almost eerie. Most of the time we were the only people on the street, and we never thought to use the sidewalks as the streets were completely empty of cars. This main square is called the Hauptplatz, and is a handsome square of baroque buildings, scarred a bit by all the trolley wires. There was also a sad little post Christmas market full of marked down Santas. It did have an extremely helpful tourist office, who armed us with such a detailed walking map of the town I thought we were going to introduce ourselves to every local burgher.