Monday morning found us in the very small town of Durnstein, about 50 kilometres upstream from Vienna. The comment was made Sunday that we were leaving Austria's largest city (Vienna) and visiting Austria's smallest town. The morning's tour was a walking tour of the town, followed by a wine tasting. Why they scheduled a wine tasting the morning after the Heuriger is one of those questions that defies an answer!!! The town is very small, with only 950 residents, but is very picturesque. It sits at the base of a hill dominated by the ruins of a castle said to be where Richard the Lionhearted was held for ransom.
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| Larry with grapevines, the town wall and the remains of the castle high above |
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| Durnstein's church tower, painted white and blue to 'bring Heaven to Earth' |
One of the long-anticipated highlights of this trip was the afternoon bike ride from Durnstein to Melk. While we had always planned on doing this ride, it was only once onboard that we discovered it was a distance of 33 kilometres. Good thing we had been working with Eric on our cardio endurance for the last six weeks!!! The plan had us leaving at 1:00 from Durnstein and rejoining the ship at Melk by 4:00PM, in time to tour Melk Abbey. Unfortunately we left 30 minutes late, and the first 7 kilometres took almost an hour to do, resulting in a "scolding" from the ride master. We were both pretty tired from this first stretch, but our preparation paid off, and after a short rest we were off again. Unfortunately Mother Nature decided we needed to be cooled off and shortly after crossing the river it started to rain. And rain some more. And thunder. And get windy. And, oh yes, the temperature dropped from 24 to 15 degrees!!!
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| Our first stop - overlooking vines and the river |
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| Our ferry had to wait for AmaCerto to pass before crossing the river |
Because the rain slowed us down some, and we were behind time at the beginning, we had to ride through a couple of the usual stops to catch up. In some ways this was disappointing, since the towns we raced through would have been quite picturesque if we had time to look more closely; but it was also a good thing, since not stopping meant our knees and backs didn`t have time to seize up from the cold and damp during the breaks!
We had raced the AmaCerto all the way along the river and made it to the dock, tired, wet, cold and a little bit saddle sore, at just about the same time as the ship did. This gave us a chance to change into some drier and warmer clothing and join our tour group for Melk Abbey. This is one of the largest abbeys in all of Europe, and has been a Benedictine-run school almost since its inception. Today it has about 900 grade-school students, most of whom live in the area around Melk. The church is quite impressive, as is the overall size of the abbey and its library that includes over 100,000 publications dating back to the 12th Century.
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| Overlooking the grounds |
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| One of the seven courtyards |
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| The Marble Hall |
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| The outside of the church |
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| The high altar inside the Melk Abbey church |
Needless to say, all of the bike riders had a bit of an early night – us included!
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