Rosie and The Operator are on a day trip from Vienna and will be visiting the Royal Residence of Schonbrunn Palace and then driving along the Danube River in the picturesque Wachau Valley to Melk, to visit the famous Abbey and the small town below it.
Its raining. Misty damp, bone chilling spring rain that has reduced the visibility of Rosie’s photo taking considerably….considering the big vistas she has to shoot today. Oh well, the weather is what the weather is, we are only going to be here once and we have to make the most of it.
Schonbrunn Palace is our first stop on the outskirts of the city of Vienna. We opted not to visit the inside of the Palace but to take a stroll through the gardens and just go for glory on the money shot pic looking down on the huge sprawling complex.
Rosie was quite happy and prepared for the long stroll from the palace through the vast formal gardens and up the hill to the Gloriette Summer House for a picture but The Operator had cunningly worked out that we could access the summer house from the palaces back door, making it easier to get to and with free parking!
The Operator was a genius, he was dead right and it was so much easier and quicker all for the same result….and abit more. Whilst en route to our destination, walking down the long paths of crunchy gravel through the palace park, we were flanked on either side by high wire fences filled with bushy garden. There, to Rosie’s amazement, pointed out by The Operator was a real life feathery bodied, long necked emu. Standing in a shaft of sunlight looking quite prehistoric and ethereal. Well, I’ll be!
The garden grounds opened up and there she be, The Gloriette, a summer house built on the crest of a hill in 1775 that looks down onto the Royal Palace.
This large pavilion was built as a focal point from the palace and a lookout back over the palace once you were in the building itself. It was used back in the day as a dining and breakfast hall for Emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it has a café in it for the public to enjoy. The rain had eased and the light was beautiful as was the reflection in the pond in front of it.
This is the pic of the Schonbrunn Palace that Rosie was after…..she was a little disappointed….Rosie was picturing magnificent symmetrical gardens of manicured box hedges and sparkling fountains squirting high into the sky. It wasn’t as majestic a sight as in Rosie’s mind’s eye of what a Habsburg palace would look like but the scale and size for the time it was built is incredible. The Operator said the fancy side was over the other side of the building…and we had to pay for that. Dang.
The Schonbrunn Palace was used as the summer residence of the Habsburgs and was only about a forty minute drive across town to the Hofburg Palace their main residence in town. It was built in 1569 and has 1,441 rooms. 45 of them can be visited today if you were to tour the palace…that’s a lot locked up and gathering dust!
Well, that is all of the 500 acres Rosie and The Operator will be visiting today, there are beautiful live mazes made from the finest trimmed hedges. Orangeries, carriage houses, a zoo and the largest greenhouse in Europe to visit. It’s not for us, we walked back and down the same path and instead of seeing any more emus we were accosted by two fierce eyed, bold as brass squirrels who came right up to us and started circling us for food. They were not shy and Rosie knows that they must get a lot of attention and food from other visitors walking this path. The Operators stomping didn’t get rid of the beady eyed rodent like terrorists and they didn’t leave us until another couple crossed our path and fed them.
Onwards we drove to Melk, an hour’s drive from Vienna. The road does not romantically wend along the Danube River as Rosie thought it would but takes the shortest line across country and we never got a glimpse of the famous river until we arrived.
The weather had started to close in and a light misty rain was falling when we drove into the town of Melk. On the hill above the town, nearly dwarfing it in its size, stretched the huge majestic, stripey, mustard coloured Benedictine Abbey of Melk. The Abbey and town sit gracefully overlooking the Danube River and the adjoining Wachau Valley.
The abbey was founded in 1089 when the emperor gave one of his castles to the Benedictine Monks. It became a monastic school in the 12th century where up to 50 monks and 900 students lived and studied at any one time including up to today. The current Abby building you see here is predominantly from the 17th century.
It was a beautiful walk up the hill and through the picture postcard albeit touristy small town of Melk.
Through the giant gates we walked and into the huge courtyard.
Inside, the abbey is a stunning shade of blushing pastel colours and the self guided tour of the Abbey that we opted for is very civilized. They are totally set up to cater for the thousands of tourists that visit every day on bus tours and from the riverboats that park up a couple of kilometres down river.
A single one way path through the abbey leads you from exhibit to exhibit and room to room. Rosie and The Operator dodged with ease the large tour groups along the way and joined the back of them when we wanted something explained in more detail. Sorry, folks, no photos in the abbey.
Ok, Rosie snuck a few….cause look how amazing the abbeys treasure chest is! Check out that locking mechanism in the lid of the chest! When you turned the giant key, there was so much resistance, Rosie could hardly move it…and to see every piece move when the key was turned – incredible!
The Marble Hall was stunning, pretty flash alright for a monastery dining room. The remarkable ceiling fresco was painted in 1731 and the architectural painting framing it creates an optical illusion making the ceiling look as though it rises and curves up, when in fact, it is flat! Just breathtaking!
Okay..Rosie was having a bit of an off day today and most of her sneaky pics turned out totally rubbish…but hey, that is what the gift store at the end of the tour is for. Rosie always buys a couple of postcards and photographs them as a reminder of the beautiful rooms and of course to show you. Out side on the windy, freezing cold terrace we were allowed to take photos.
The views from out on the terraces overlooking the town and the river were fantastic! Rosie didn’t mind the drizzly rain one bit when you have this to look at!
The library of the abbey is one of the main showpieces and show stoppers that just leave you slack jawed with wonder. Its main hall boasts 16,000 volumes stacked floor to ceiling. In total the library which has 12 library rooms, has been collecting books since its inception in the 13th century and holds 100,000 valuable and rare books of which many are irreplaceably priceless!
This library is what made Melk so famous throughout the ages as a premier place for learning. Its incredible collections from around the world and academic stature saved it from dissolution like all of the other monastic abbeys in the late 18th century and it has survived through the ages because of the treasures it has housed.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, you enter the final stop on the walk through. The most important place in the Abbey, the Baroque church. Stunning in its blush colour palette and highlighted with gold ornamentation and statuary. Rosie’s camera finger was itching to reel off a photo shoot…but, more than God was watching, in the form of hawk eyed attendants.
Buried in the vaults of the church are some of Austrias first rulers from the House of Badenburg, the ruling noble family from 976 to 1246. Also, very well posed and displayed are the skeletal remains of Saint Coloman who was an Irish pilgrim enroute to Jerusalem when he was captured just out of Vienna and accused of being a spy because of his different clothes and accent. He was hung from a tree and soon after that it was reported that miracles were happening at his grave. He was then proclaimed a saint and his corpse was bought to Melk where it has laid in this rather odd position since 1014.
What a great tour in such a beautiful place. The rain was still misty when we exited and walked back to the car through the town where we stopped and sampled some apricot liquor. The town would have looked so lively on a beautiful sunny day with the outdoor terraces open and full of people. Not to worry, once again it felt like we had the place all to ourselves.
Back to Vienna we drove and in the JudenPlatz, the square where our apartment is, we sat and had our last meal in the city. What a brilliant time we have had here and what a decadent and opulent life you would have lead, back in the day if you were well healed and an aristocrat. It is mind blowing looking at the wealth this city was built on over the last 500 years. Its also mind blowing at how well it has been preserved over that time. What a rich and complex history this city has and what a great time we have had here.
Tomorrow we are driving back into Slovakia and visiting Bratislava, the last stop on our Slovakia Tour. This compact city is one of the places Rosie has wanted to visit for such a long time and EVERYONE says it as a place that CANNOT be missed. Till tomorrow.
Keen on seeing more of Vienna? Let Rosie also show you the great Tourist Sights of Beautiful Vienna.
Fancy checking out more of Rosie and The Operators Travels in Slovakia?
Visit the mighty Spis Castle and step back in time to the The Walled City of Medieval Levoca
Kosice – Medieval Gem of a Town and the second largest city in Slovakia.
