What a beautiful day this turned out to be! Not only was it sunny and warm but our tour took us to see some beautiful scenery and we met some nice folks along the way. While we were waiting for our tour operator to pick us up outside our hotel, George got into a conversation with another hotel guest. It turns out he’s a church organist in Norway, so I think they enjoyed their conversation. The bus picked us up shortly after 9am and took us to a central location where we met the double-decker tour bus. The drive of about an hour was from Vienna to Spitz, through some lovely countryside – farming, forest and vineyards – and a number of small quaint towns. Maybe sometime we’ll come back and travel that way on our own. At Spitz we transferred to a boat for a trip up the Danube to the town of Melk.

On the boat we shared space with a couple from Australia and found we had quite a bit in common. She is very involved in their church, enjoys church music and of course, travel is always a great topic to while away the time. We shared lunch with them once we arrived at Melk, then it was off to see the beautiful Benedictine Abbey. Our tour guide at the Abbey was a young girl from a small village nearby who spoke perfect English. She did a great job telling us about the history of the baroque building, which is still a working Abbey. The church was unbelievably ornate with gold everywhere one looked. A few of us commented on how incongruous that seemed given the Benedictine focus on the community. The library was also interesting – housing some 100,000 volumes dating back to the Middle Ages.

The trip back to Vienna by bus was somewhat quieter – both of us took the opportunity to have a brief snooze. We just stopped for dinner at another one of the little cafés on our street on our way back home, as we were both tired. Tonight we spent the time catching up on email (George had lots of emails to acknowledge) and planning our last two days in Vienna.