Photo 1: our transport through Dürnstein.
Photo 2: part of the village with castle ruins on the hill above. Lovely window boxes are everywhere.
Photo 3: a model of Melk Abbey
Photo 4: Abbey facade
Photo 5: ceiling fresco
On Tuesday we sailed through the Wachau Valley. This part of
the Danube is wine country and on both sides of the river we have seen rolling
forested hills, vineyards and little villages aplenty. We stopped at Dürnstein,
a village of several hundred people, and had a lovely walk through the medieval
streets which are now fully protected as part of a world heritage area. It
reminded Phil of villages in Switzerland near Geneva. Our guide told us that
the village welcomes over 1,000,000 visitors per year! That shows how busy the
Danube is with tourist traffic.
We passed through the village and visited the former monastery with its
beautiful baroque architecture. We also took photos of the ruins of the castle
in which England’s King Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned by Leopold of
Austria in 1190 on his way back from the Third Crusade.
In the afternoon we sailed to the town of Melk and visited the 18th
century Benedictine Abbey that overlooks the town. It is a huge complex of
beautiful buildings that can best be described in pictures rather than words.
The art work throughout the Abbey is every bit as stunning as that in the
Vatican. The painted ceilings and ornate sculptures are reminiscent of Michelangelo’s
work, at least in our opinion. Artefacts in the museum date back up to 1,000
years ago.
Tomorrow we visited Salzburg, location for The Sound of Music. After lots
of walking today we hope to spend more time in the coach rather than ‘climb
every mountain’.
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