{"id":2645,"date":"2016-05-23T14:06:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T20:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2645"},"modified":"2016-05-23T14:06:04","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T20:06:04","slug":"nude-on-the-danube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2645","title":{"rendered":"Nude on the Danube"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, our last day in Vienna, we decided to go the the Wachau Valley to cruise the Danube and visit the largest and most famous Benedictine Abbey in the country.\u00a0\u00a0 Melk, where the Abbey is located, is about 1 1\/2 hours outside of Vienna.\u00a0 The trip to the Wachau Valley took about an hour+ and then we boarded a river boat in the adorable town of Spitz.\u00a0 The scenery along the Danube River was nice with a number of small towns, medieval villages, ruins and castles along the river; and it was also dotted with lots of grape orchards.\u00a0 \u00a0Along one section, there were a number of nude Austrian couples enjoying the river bank and the warm temperatures – it was a sight to behold!\u00a0 \u00a0It was a beautiful day but it did make us realize (as we watched at least 5 large river cruise ships on the Danube) that the slow pace of a “sleep-on-board” river cruise is not for us.\u00a0 The scenery was lovely for our 1 1\/2 hour cruise to Melk but could get quite monotonous if one was on board for a week to ten days on these very popular river cruises.
\n\u001f
\nThe monastery towers over the Danube and is located along one of Europe’s ancient trading routes in the Wachau Valley.\u00a0 The Melk Abbey is a very large, stunning structure; an historic beauty and still houses about 20 monks and a secondary school for 900 children.\u00a0 The abbey is over 900 years old and has been beautifully restored.\u00a0 It is immense; however, only a small portion of the Abbey is available to tour due to the monastery and school.\u00a0 We were very surprised to discover that at the Abbey’s peak, it only housed 100 monks.\u00a0 The Abbey was a gift from one of the Hasburgs that ruled Austria for 650 years.\u00a0 There are 8 libraries; however, we were only able to see two.\u00a0 The main library was quite spectacular with its 16,000 ancient books, richly-decorated galleries and the ceiling covered with awe-inspiring frescoes packed with precious leather-bound volumes.\u00a0 \u00a0It clearly would be overwhelming to any book-lover.\u00a0 Actually, the library is still in use where a few gaps in the bookshelves showed.\u00a0 The church inside the Abbey is a masterpiece adorned with frescoes and ornamentation.\u00a0 The church itself made the visit worthwhile for us. The tour was informative but the church was much more decorative than we expected from Benedictine monks.
\n\u001f
\nThe Benedictines’ lifestyle is ascetic.\u00a0 Living in this splendor, no doubt, has to lift their spirits.\u00a0 You can’t help pondering about the monks’ extraordinary housing, gorgeous domed towers, baroque sculptures, gold-plated wood carvings, fine marble columns, a library packed with precious leather-bound volumes and a spectacular view across the Danube!
\n\u001f\u001f
\nOverall, we had a very pleasant time on a very warm day.\u00a0 Tomorrow we are off to Prague for 6 days.
\n\u001f<\/p>\n

\"Cruising<\/a>
Cruising the Danube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"One<\/a>
One of the many towns<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Love<\/a>
Love these long hallways<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Statue<\/a>
Statue at Melk Abbey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"One<\/a>
One of the treasures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Another<\/a>
Another treasure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Great<\/a>
Great Hall – the ceiling is painted and is not as deep as it shows<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Wachau<\/a>
Wachau Valley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Melk<\/a>
Melk Abbey Church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Melk<\/a>
Melk Abbey Church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Wachau<\/a>
Wachau Valley from the Melk Abbey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, our last day in Vienna, we decided to go the the Wachau Valley to cruise the Danube and visit the largest and most famous Benedictine Abbey in the country.\u00a0\u00a0 Melk, where the Abbey is located, is about 1 1\/2 hours outside of Vienna.\u00a0 The trip to the Wachau Valley took about an hour+ … Continue reading Nude on the Danube<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Si9J-GF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2645"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2662,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645\/revisions\/2662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}