After Vienna, things got decidedly medieval. Castles, ruins of castles, monasteries, and cobble-streeted villages (“willages” in the direct translation!).
The first of these stops was a post brekkie visit to Dürstein, a small but spectacularly positioned village on a bend in the Danube. It sits surrounded by vineyards at the foot of a craggy hill, crowned with a ruined castle. Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned there for some time. Maybe we found the room…
The town gate
“Richard was ‘ere”
Sailing to our afternoon stop of Melk, we saw castles and churches, and a nose. Not just the sniffly red (from the cold!) thing in the middle of our face, but a large sculpture protruding from the grass. Go figure!
Melk is a village with a massive Abbey overlooking it. Abbeys mean monks, monks mean…alcohol!! Just like the order at New Norcia, these guys are Benedictine Monks, and they make a brew from herbs that they consider the elixir of life. It’s a bit like Jägermeister and, at 40% alcohol, has much the same influence on a ‘life’. I only bought a small one! The abbey itself was very overdone with gold. The reason given was so that people needed to know what heaven was like and so they would stay under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
The town of Melk from the Abbey
Below the Abbey
We walked back to the ship and chatted with some Americans from another ship. They were jealous of ours! Good job APT.
European Adventures 