DAY 117 FRIDAY JULY 20 MELK ABBEY

Went to the main station at 8.30 and looked at five different destinations for the day and with the help of the friendly ticket staff picked Melk as it was the first train to leave.  The town was recommended in the Eurail Handbook and we found it to be a quiet old town with a cute narrow shopping street, dominated by a massive Abbey.  This is what we saw in the first courtyard:

It was built as a Benedictine Monastery in the 18thC and has been renovated quite recently at a cost of 22million euros. We found it well worth looking through.  The ceiling in the arch looked thus;

First we went down to the crypt where there was an exhibition about the architect and the large number of projects in Austria he supervised. There was an aerial photo of the Abbey:

 As we walked through the rooms we found beautiful paintings on the ceilings and walls (hundreds of cherubs) and ver rich robes.

Once again we had difficulty relating the extravagance to modern and ancient Christian ideals.  But where do we find extravance nowadays?  Just saw a brief TV clip on Dubai.  One of the rooms was completely walled with mirrors.

I think the auto focus was nonplussed.  There is always a model, of course, to give us the big picture.

Then there was the actual view of the town from the balcony.

We moved into the library which was a smaller version of the one we saw in Dublin, this time with fewer people.

The Moebius Strip was a nice touch.

It was 12noon as we went down to the church on the ground floor and Angelus was just starting so we heard a massive organ play an introduction and two priests led the prayers.

Outside we wandered around the beautiful gardens then bought tickets at the waterfront for a cruise along the Danube to Krems on the AUSTRIA.

Settled in quietly on the poop deck when two busloads arrived at the last minute and filled up the area.
They rushed from one side to the other to photograph the churches and castles we passed.

There were a lot of cargo barges heading upstream and we saw two of the long cruise ships we had been expecting to see. This was the Rossini.

And this one was the Mozart.

We caught the Wiesel Train back to Wien.

Another double decker.  Quick change at the hotel then back to St Stephen's in the heart of town for our concert.  Found the model of this church to add to our collection of models.

Had a quick look inside then went to the Mozarthaus around the corner.

We were ushered into the performance room which was round and about 10 metres across. We had front row seats. We chatted with a regular concert goer from Brussels while waiting. The musicians dressed in period costume and the room was the oldest remaining performance place in Vienna and hosted Mozart.  The played a Mozart quartet first, then one by Verdi and finally one by Beethoven. We could reach out and touch the bow of the cello player they were so close.  The acoustics were perfect and the group had performed all over Europe and Asia.  they were fantastic.