This morning we did a walking tour of the Stift Melk Monastery. This monastery was a Prince Bishop’s Palace donated to the Benedictine Monks by the Prince Bishop in the 1200s. It is still a Benedictine Monastery today and the 33 monks all work in various roles. Part of the Palace/Monastery is now a school for 800 students and a couple of the monks are teachers. There is a record of Marie Therese, the Mother of Marie Antoinette, visiting the monastery. Marie Therese had 16 children, 11 boys and 5 girls. Other important people stayed there too as the building was always available to welcome travellers.
The Monastery has a very good museum with documents on display from 600AD and all sorts of old artefacts. The building is in the Baroque style and has great displays of Bishop’s Robes, Hats etc as well as chalices and paintings.
The ceiling of the dining room is painted with fresco’s and appears to be curved, but in fact the ceiling is flat with the painting giving it the illusion of a curve. This is really a strange thing as in other rooms the ceilings are actually curved. The rooms are magnificent and decorated beautifully.
The terrace has a great view of the Danube and the town of Melk. Leaving the terrace we entered the most magnificent library, one room containing 9000 books from earliest times to now. In total there are 8 library rooms with a total of 100,000 books in 16 different languages. If you stayed to read them all you would be there for 248 years.
We then went downstairs into the Church, yes, another one, but it was very beautiful. Then it was outside into the beautiful manicured gardens with fountains etc. Obviously there is a monk in charge of the gardens. They have 1,000,000 tourists per year @ 12.80 euro per head, plus school fees to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of the buildings and grounds.
We wandered down into the beautiful little village and had a medical emergency. I tried on a top and in the process managed to stab myself in the top of the nose with my thumbnail. You would not believe how much it bled and how much it amused Gerard, Michael and Lee. No sympathy from any of them, except an offer of a bandaid for my nose. Seriously! I was not going to walk around with a bandaid on my nose. I ended up doing a Norman Gunston with a bit of tissue stuck on my nose and in a few minutes it stopped. Yes, I bought the top and we wandered back to the boat.
This afternoon we sailed down the Danube past many towns with Castles and Churches. It was so picturesque. We pulled into Durnstein where we were to stay until midnight and went for a walk into the town. This is where Richard the Lionheart was kept captive during his crusade by the Austrian Prince Bishop. Eventually Richard was released and the Prince Bishop was chastised by the Pope for doing this. He died early when he fell from a horse.
The little town was very cute with the usual castle, cobble stones and church. We were back on board for a rest before dinner and the night entertainment was a disco where the staff were the entertainment, it was quite funny.
