Saturday, May 11, 2013
Persenbeug to Melk 30 km (778 total km)
14C (57F) Cloudy and dry before turning to a drizzly rain

Gasthof Zum Fürsten, €64 ($83) double including breakfast


Back Over the Persenbeug / Ybbs Bridge

Our little Pension Mileta offered simple breakfast with 'budget' quality breads, cold cuts and cheese. And since we have only about 35 kilometer to ride to Melk, we skipped the picnic fixings. Besides, the weather forecast looked too gloomy for a picnic.

At 9 am, we bid goodbye to the owner of the pension and backtracked the two kilometers to arrive on the other side of the long bridge on the south side of the Donau again.

 
Brief Glimpse of Ybbs

Ybbs has a lovely old town center. We took the little detour to ride through it. It has a bicycle museum which has put up a sculpture made from bicycles near the waterfront. We snapped pictures of the sculpture and skipped the actual museum.

 
This area is known for its pears and everything made from them, "most" which is cider and preserves to name a few.

It began to drizzle by now so we pressed on.

The charming villages, on both sides of the Donau, still looked lovely but not as striking as when dramatic clouds and blue skies enter the picture.

 
Drizzled Steadily - No Sun Today

Again it was an easy ride. About ten kilometers from Melk, the impressive Benedictine Abbey became visible through the mist. Several tour boats were moored at Melk. 
 
Under a steady drizzle, we followed Hiro into Melk's charming old town center, keeping the Benedictine Abbey on our left. We found the hotel we reserved easily enough.

We checked into a lovely room on Rathaus square with the Abbey towering behind. There are good reasons for Gasthof Zum Fürsten’s great TripAdvisor reviews. We had a spacious room on the second floor above the warm and cozy restaurant. Two flower boxes with red blooming geraniums hung in front of our windows. This will be a delightful place to wait out the rain.

We met Junko and Hiro for lunch at pizza and Greek place across the way. It was a nice change from typical fried Austrian fare.

The rain continued off and on for the afternoon and we hunkered down in our nice room for the duration of the day.

 
 

Sunday, May 12th - Melk Abbey Day
Clouds, rain showers, and spotty openings of sun - 16C (61F)

After late breakfast, we decided to take advantage of the dry weather and make a visit to the alluring Melk Abbey (Stift Melk in German) towering above our Gasthaus.

 
Melk Tour Choo-Choo
 
.....A bright red tour bus, with carriages made to look like a toy train, was standing by the fountain in front of our guesthouse. What the heck, we hopped on the little choo-choo tour bus.

 
It took us past age-old historic homes, the House on the Rock and the Oldest Postal building in Austria, in the Old Town of Melk before a short stop at the waterfront where we were told that 1700 ships dock every year. In high season sometimes 3 deep. And plans are, in the next 2 years, to accommodate up to 6000 ships a year, more than any town on the Donau, including Vienna. During the summer months, a sea of people make their way through Melk's historic center. In the winter, you could run naked though town and nobody would be there to see, our driver added.

Next stop for the tour choo-choo was, on top of high rock outcrop above Melk, at the famous Benedictine Abbey. The Abbey was founded in 1089. Today's impressive Baroque abbey was built between 1702 and 1736.

 

Melk Abbey Visit
 
I flinched at the row of tour buses parked in the parking lot. We made our way to the ticket office (tickets are €9.50 pp). We followed the flow of people to the Abbey museum in the former imperial rooms where the monastery's 900 year old history is explained.  

Dave and I skipped through this section rather quickly while Hiro and Junko patiently waited behind the groups of tours for their turn at the displays. We were not as interested in the details as Hiro and Junko and we split up.

Threatening clouds continued to move in and out. This created ever-changing spectacular impressions. We finally tore ourselves away from it and entered the amazing library, which oozed history. Over 16000 books, identically bound, graced the shelves. We enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere there and reading samples of what was written so long ago.

We didn't think that we could be more impressed by Baroque than what we had already seen in St. Steven's Cathedral in Passau. But this abbey is over-the-top Baroque with amazing craftsmanship of the gilded pulpit, columns of marble, intricate carvings, statues and angels, heavenly paintings of bible stories on ceilings and walls.

  
Next we visited the old wine cellar which had small exhibit. Finally, we waited out a short downpour before eating our lunch in the French garden of the Baroque Garden Pavilion built in 1748. 
 
Afterwards, we took a peak at the 250 year old frescoes, done by Johann Wenzel Bergl in 1764,  gracing the walls. The place has been turned into self-serve cafe. More black clouds rolled in so we made our way down the steps to town.

The little tour choo-choo was ready to take off again so we hopped on for the rest of the tour through other parts of town.

 
Junko and Hiro Add:
 
Melk
雨の中メルク入りした。久しぶりの雨。暑いほどの陽気が一転して冬のように寒くなる。小さい街だが世界遺産であるメルク修道院でもっているという感じの街。観光客がウィーンからひっきりなしに訪れてくる。ドナウ河クルーズの人や自転車旅の人とあちこちで行き交う。あまりにも絢爛豪華なメルク修道院の聖堂。天井のフレスコ画のイメージはオレンジ色と金色。なぜか暖かい雰囲気がしてくる。11世紀にオーストリアを支配していたバーベンベルグ家がベネディクト修道会にここの城砦を贈ったところから始まったと言われる。その後の教会の波乱の歴史、そして今ここに堂々と蘇っている。それは人の一生とて同じ。喜びと苦悩。成功と失敗。愛と憎しみ。開始と終末。さまざまなドラマ、、、。そう解説していた。不思議なことにだんだん宗教的な気分になって来た。
 
 
   
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References: 

....1) The Danube Cycle Way; Donaueschingen to Budapest by John Higginson
... 2) Bikeline Maps & Guides; Donau-Radweg 1, (5 books in the series)

Our plan in a nutshell; 2900 total kilometers at 50 km per day - 2 days riding for 1 day off for a total of 58 riding days & 90 total days - April to July, 2013 :)