Fat Tuesday in Melk

After touring the Melk Abbey, we went into the small town of Melk for lunch. We got lucky and found a spot right on the square and went into one of the restaurants for lunch. All of a sudden we realized that people were gathering all along the sidewalk. Our waitress told us there was a prade for "Carnival" - we had completely forgotten that it was Fat Tuesday! Brent didn't seem too interested, so I went out and found a great spot to watch.

One of my favorites were these crazy women line dancing to Achy Breaky heart. Too funny.

You would never see this in the states. They were handing out different shots of schnapps along the parade route. Who am I to say no? I mean, when in Rome....!!

I liked the chefs. They were handing out some type of a hot dish with beef (I hope it was beef), potatoes, and fresh horseradish grated over the top. It was yummy. At the end, people were handing out chocolates. Mmmmmm.

Many of the little towns we went through were having Fat Tuesday celebrations just like this one. We caught it totally by accident, and had a great time. My next posts will be from Salzburg.

Melk Abbey

Melk Church is supposed to be the finest example of a baroque church in Austria, and possibly all of Europe. We first toured the abbey; we had a tour with a German speaking couple and a tour guide who would first discuss things in German and then in English for us. This abbey has about 30 Benedictine monks living there and has a school for about 90 students. These first two pictures show the entrance to the abbey.

As we went from room to room, not only did our guide lock each door with a key, and then armed the alarm electronically as we left. Incredible security in this place. This hallway seems to just go on forever. This is a replica of the Melk cross. The Melk cross is their most valuable possession as it encases a splinter from Christ's cross.

This cape and staff are still used today at Christmas and Easter.

This is the painted ceiling in the marble room. This room was used as a dining room by the empress Maria Theresa when she came there. She often brought a party of over 300 people with her when she travelled here. I really liked the library, although this is only one of ten rooms that make up the library. There were books there that were over 700 years old.

These two pictures come from the church itself. It was breath taking. I took so many pictures, but am only incuding two here.

We're going into the town of Melk for lunch.

Drive Along the Danube

This was a beautiful drive even in the winter. There are actually quite a few castles along the way, but unfortunately there's enough snow that it's impossible to actually get to any of them. This one, Aggstein, is open for tours, but the road was impassable and we couldn't get any closer. This second castle is very close to the road so we were able to get a pretty decent picture.

These castle ruins are in Durnstein and legend has it that Richard the Lionhearted was held here. At night it is beautiful as the ruins themselves are lit as well as the fortification walls that remain. Most of the castles in Austria are privately owned and this one is too. Apparently there's some contention between the owner and the town. The town would like to insure that what's left is protected but the owner doesn't seem to care.

The Wachau is known for its wines and the terraced vineyards are pretty incredible.

We stayed at the Stockingerhof vineyard's B&B. They were in the midst of renovations plus it's winter, so there is absolutely no one staying there. It was wonderful! We had the whole place to ourselves. Here's a little glimpse of the Stockingerhof vines. The owner gave us a bottle of their white to take with us. We're going to try to get it home in one piece.

We drove into Krems for dinner. Here is the gate into the old city. This area is all pedestrian and is full of shops and restaurants. We found the old fortification wall along a small alley and you can see it here along the Bistro De LaTour. We decided to eat here and had a great meal in a very small cave-like restaurant with 3 rooms: a bar, and 2 eating rooms. The Olympic downhill race was on the tv in the bar and everyone kept going out to watch the race!

On our way out of Durnstein, we drove a little further into the small town. This picture gives you a good example of the narrow twisting roads where two cars can barely pass. It reminded me a lot of France where the women had their baskets and were heading to the various markets to get their food for the day.

Onward along the Danube to Melk and the abbey there.

Stallions, Palaces, and Opera Oh My!

Our first stop at the Hofburg was the Spanish Riding School. We had tickets to see the Lipizzaner stallions. No pics were allowed as it "irritated" the horses! You can see the detail here in the school - like the rest of the palace. We don't know much about horses or riding, but this was pretty incredible. They start out with the younger stallions and show the easy things and then move into the more skilled stallions who can do the airs above the ground and the other difficult moves. Everything is synchronized to music and is pretty incredible.

It's hard to get a real sense of how large the Hofburg Palace is from these pictures. Hopefully you can get an idea of the detail on the buildings.

Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures in the Imperial Apartments. I snapped this pic of Brent just before he starts up the Emperor's Stairway. I'm not sure what the thought behind this is...I understand the flash aspect and maybe it's because people forget and take flash shots anyway. How am I expected to scrapbook without photos - oh yes, postcards purchased in the gift shop where you end up at the end of the tour. LOL!

Part of the tour of the Hofburg includes a tour of the silver and china. We pretty much buzzed thru this, but I did pause to take a few pics of things I liked the best. First of all, you cannot imagine how many different table settings there were and how many of each were included. Hard to imagine all these things survived. One of the things we found interesting were that each diner had their own carafe of water and wine and their own salt cellar. This first picture shows one of the patterns that was a gift from Marie Antoinette.


I just liked this floral pattern for some reason.

Can you imagine how large a table you would need to carry this sucker off?

This is the entrance to the Imperial Treasury. I was surprised that we could take pictures in here - go figure. It didn't make sense to me that we couldn't take them in the Imperial Apartments but we could take them here. I'm not greedy. I'd take the smallest of gems!

This first crown was a gift from the Turks. Any Turks need a friend...I'm available!

Horse-drawn carriages are outside many of the "attractions" in Vienna, lined up just like taxis in NYC!

I love the colors of all the buildings: yellow, peach, blue, and this sort of coral color. This is where the symphony performs each New Years Eve. This is supposed to be quite a show, very expensive and requiring reservations years in advance.

One of the things I most wanted to do while in Vienna (Wien, pronounced Veen) was to attend an opera. I don't really like opera, but I figured if I were ever to attend one it would have to be here. We opted to attend an operetta written by an Austrian, Franz Lehar. It's called Das Land des Lachelns, or The Land of Smiles. I was very excited to be here, as you can tell by the photo. We had read about the general story line before coming here, but it really helped that they flashed some English translation at the top of the curtain...just like subtitles!

Arrival in Vienna

We arrived in Vienna around lunch time on Saturday. We saw our hotel but of course there were no parking spaces. After driving around the block a few times, we picked one of the parking garages on another parallel street. Interestingly enough, we followed others from the parking garage, and it led us through a mall type building, right out through a textile store. This was the shortest route to the street where our hotel was located.

The entrance to the hotel looked like a basic store front. We found an elevator which only held two people or one person and a suitcase. There were actually other hotels and businesses located here. The owners were very friendly and our room was fine. An interesting bathroom though. The entire room was molded much like our one piece bathtub/shower units are molded.

We quickly checked in and went to meet Fritz, the software manager who was training Brent for a few days. It was very kind of Fritz to do this and we got a good introduction to the city and especially the subway or the U system.

Fritz took us to a restaurant that was known for its outstanding wiener schnitzel and it was served with a german style potato salad. Then we were on our way to see St. Stephans, or Stephansdom as it's called here. I took this picture of the reflection of the large spire of the church. The church is located in a huge pedestrian square, surrounded by shops. It is huge inside and unfortunately, I didn't get a good shot of the alter. Usually you can go there, but there was a concert of some sort starting in about an hour so everything was blocked off.

As we continued walking, we could see the dome of the Hofburg Palace down a very small pedestrian walkway. We went to the palace on Sunday.

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