April 15 - Austria

Pipe Organ in the church

Melk Abbey

Lucky us, got to sleep in until 8. Whoopee! We spent most of the day in the lounge as we sailed through the Wachau region of Austria. This is the main wine region, with the vineyards growing along the Danube as they do along the Rhine. Mick narrated along the way about the castles and ruins we saw. At noon we docked in Emmersdorf. After lunch of a nice self serve salad, I passed again on the soup and had the fish, which I did not care for. The sautéed leeks and polenta were both good though. Fruit with whipped creams was a nice light dessert. Kerry and I got ready so once lunch was over and we could disembark we would head over the bridge into Melk. The shuttle over and back was $18 each with a time limit in town, so frugal as we are, we walked. Mid-way over the huge bridge it started raining and hailing. OK, maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. I had my gortex jacket on but Kerry did not and was using a plastic bag over her head that we brought for carrying our purchases back. We took a short cut at the end of the bridge down the stairs to the bottom and got under the bridge and thought we’d wait it out a bit. Well, it didn’t look like it was going to give up and I thought there was a bus stop on the other side of the road down a bit. She didn’t believe me so I ventured out and was trying to make out the times, etc on the sign, as it WAS a bus top and low and behold, here comes the bus around the corner. I yelled for her and she saw it at the same time and came running and wet as we were, he stopped and took us on our way for $2.50 each way. He dropped us in the center of Old Town right in front of a clothing store. Kerry thought she might find a rain hat but no luck. We went to the Visitor Center to use the restroom and see where there might be WIFI, but they said there was none in the town but they had a “rental” computer we could use for $1.50 for 15 minutes so we waited our turn and used it to check in at home.

spiral staircase in abbey

The main attraction of the town is the Melk Abbey which was 50 steps up. We did the walk and talked the talk. Most of the displays were in English and the view of Melk from there was highly impressive as was the view of the Danube. Too bad we could not see our ship from there. The ancient books, chalices and alter crosses were beautiful and some pieces held bone and teeth of martyrs. The library has 12 rooms and thousands of books and ancient manuscripts. Even the library is very ornate. The church itself is huge and extremely ornate with huge richly decorated “boxes” on the upper levels for the aristocratic families, kinda like opera boxes. Several of the side altars have mummified bodies behind glass. That wasn’t quite so nice to view.

We stopped in a few shops before heading back to where we were told to catch the bus back across the river to Emmersdorf. We knew the buses were about done running and were a bit on the nervous side that one – we’d missed the last bus and two – that we’d be the last ones back again and three – that we’d miss dinner again if we had to walk back. Besides, we were bone tired. Lady luck was on our side as we did get the last bus and we did get back before missing dinner or the evening briefing. Of course everyone could see us dragging on with our packages in tow.

The dinner salad tonight was goat cheese terrine, yummy, and I passed again on the soup. I had the spinach quiche and the semolina pudding for dessert. The quiche was delicious but geez, a person would starve on that tiny slice so I asked for another and got it. Well they brought 2 so Kerry, Angela and Etsuko finished it off. Following our after dinner tea Kerry and I worked on the puzzle for a while before turning it and reading a while.