European Trip Day 19 Durnstein & Melk

Durnstein & Melk, Austria

I love that we wake up in the morning and we are somewhere else in Europe. Peeking out the window, Durnstein looked so cute. We are in the Wachau Valley now….a wonderfully beautiful part of the world. The Danube cuts through deep valleys and the mountains on either side are often covered by terraced vineyards or orchards of stone fruit trees. They make world class wine in this region and are famous for their apricot schnapps, liqueurs etc or mostly white wines.

The weather is not being kind to us. It’s another drear day or threatening rain. Brollies are a must. We chose to take the Noddy train on offer to take us up to the village. It took us on a meandering wander through other nearby small villages and vineyards first. We knew we were going quite slowly when a posse of cyclists from another boat passed us on the way up the hill.

Being the weekend, sadly the Blue church was closed to us, but we could go into the coutyard and also admire it from the outside.

Up on the hill you can see the ruins of the castle where Richard the LionHeart was held prisoner for some months after the holy wars. Barb badly wanted to walk up to it and went about 50 metres up the hill before regretfully turning around again. The cobbled path was far too steep and slippery in the wet. Not worth risking a broken leg for!

We went instead to examine the town. Our Tour Director urged us to go into one particular shop that sold very bright hand made jewellery, and tins of “Rabbit shit”! This was actually apricot chocolate pellets, but the Grandkids will love it. We also sampled and bought some of the apricot liqueur.

Most of the town was full of tourist shops. There were the Dirndle outfits for girls and lederhosen for boys as well as all manner of souvenirs and postcards. We wandered happily around for some time then walked slowly back to the boat. We made it just in time before the heavens opened. The people not far behind us were absolutely drenched when they came in, and had to have a complete change of clothes.

The next part of the journey to Melk was probably the most scenic yet. Barb was delighted by constantly seeing castles on the hill, quaint villages with gorgeous churches. She was kept bust running in and out of the rain with her camera, determined to miss nothing. We also had a number of locks to negotiate on this part of the journey. There were eight locks in total which we had to do again on the way back.

We caught sight of Melk Abbey looming in the distance. It sure is big! Buses arrived to take us up the hill to see the Abbey and have a guided tour. Our tour guide this time was a lady with a very quiet but condescending manner. We didn’t really enjoy her talk much, but the vast rooms of the old part of the Abbey were amazing. The church was filled with more gold than you could poke a stick at, and the library contained 100,000 old books.

We all repaired to the courtyard restaurant for coffee to await our buses somewhere dry and out of the rain. Barb was amused to see all the potted lantana surrounding the fountain. Very exotic!

No-one was upset to have missed afternoon tea. It’s getting to the stage where we’re thinking “Please don’t make me eat any more cake!” The food on this trip has been exquisite, but they stuff you so full! On our way back in the Noddy train they showed us a building which showed us the levels of flooding of the Danube. It got very high!

Our next stop tomorrow is Bratislava. We declined to go to the music quiz show as we were too tired after a very full day sight-seeing. Holidays are hard work!