Petersontravels

After departing Vienna the cruise ship sailed up the Danube overnight to Durnstein, Austria.  Durnstein is in the heart of Austria’s best wine region, the Wachau Valley.   This is the view as we departed the ship.  Beautiful spot!

We had an excursion to go and visit the Weingut Nikolaihof winery in the nearby village of Mautern an der Donau.  No, I can’t pronounce any of that!  This is the oldest winery in Austria.

The winery site has almost 2000 years of history., with foundations of a Roman fort dating back to 63 AD.  The winery has been owned by the Saahs family since 1894.  Current owner Christine Saahs, together with her late husband, were some of the early pioneers of “biodynamic” wine growing in Austria, staring with the 1971 vintage.

Christine herself was on hand to give us the winery tour.  She is a bundle of enthusiasm and energy…pretty obvious she loves her job!  The walls of their wine cellar, seen behind her, date back to the times of the Romans, when this cellar was part of a Roman church.

Her son Martin is part of the winery team.  When each of Christine’s 4 children were born they made a barrel-head for each of them, this one for Martin.  The huge barrels are still used to age their wine, but they are too old to impart any flavor into the wine, which is their style.  Martin created the wineries “Cosmetics” line, using grape seed oil extracts, and it has apparently done quite well for them!

Here are Christine and Martin showing off the largest wooden wine press in the world!  It was first installed 350 years, and is still used  for special wines.

This chapel in the courtyard can be used for weddings, and sits right over the historic Roman cellars.

We made our way back to the ship, and were disappointed we didn’t have time to actually visit the little town of Durnstein, as the spot looked just beautiful from the ship as we passed by.

Further up the Wachau Valley you could see the terraced vineyards running up the hillsides.  Just a gorgeous sight for a wine lover to see!

We were up on deck for about 20 minutes taking in the sights but it got pretty damn cold and very windy, and it looked like a bit of a storm ahead, so we had to head below.  It made for a cool photo though!

There are beautiful castles and churches around every bend of the Danube in the Wachau Valley.

The clouds starting parting as we made our way to our next destination of the day (yes, we crammed a lot into this day).

Yet another gorgeous castle along the edge of the Danube.

We arrived in Melk, Austria, that same afternoon.

Our excursion in Melk was to visit the famous and absolutely stunning Abbey!  The Melk Abbey was founded in 1089, when the Babenbergs (a noble dynasty of Austrian Dukes) gave one of their castles to the Benedictine monks.  The Abbey that exists today was built between 1702 and 1736.  Napoleon himself visited this Abbey twice during his reign.

Ok, enough history.  I just love the colors of the Abbey against this perfect sky!  It almost looks fake!

The Babenbergs gifted the Abbey the Melk Cross, a reliquary which is supposed to hold a splinter from the “True Cross” that Jesus was crucified on.  We have run across a lot of places that claim to have a splinter of the cross…there must have been a lot of people rubbing their hands on the thing to pick up all of these splinters!

This is not my photo, it’s from the internet.  The reliquary that the guide indicated held the splinter looked nothing like this, so I think he might have just been confused.

He also showed us another reliquary that was supposed to have a piece of some dudes shoulder blade or jaw bone…I forget…but why do they need to have pieces of holy people spread all over the place?  It’s damn morbid!  I digress…below is the interior of the opulent (by monk standards) Abbey church.  Bear in mind we weren’t supposed to take photos, but I didn’t hear that, so hopefully I won’t receive a “cease and desist” letter from the monks.  Who am I kidding…nobody reads this!

Love the dome of the church!

We then made our way back to the cruise ship via the village of Melk.  Here is the path from the Abbey on the way down.  Makes for a picture perfect frame!

You can’t get lost, as there are blue tiles marking the path towards the Danube River.

The Abbey from below is just as impressive!

You cross the local river for another beautiful view.

We ran into some fellow cruisers and exchanged photo duties.

Up next, we cruise to Linz, Austria for a city tour and a Cider Farm visit in the countryside.

 

 

 

 

We entered several locks on the way from Bratislava to Vienna.  It was interesting to see that the ship tied up to bollards that floated up with the water in the lock.  The Captain explained that this was to keep the ship from moving around as the lock filled with water.

As the ship rose up in the lock you could see the water differential with the next section of the Danube.

That first night we had a concert prepared for us in the Vienna Military Museum.  One thing we have discovered with Uniworld is they really do an excellent job with the musical aspects of the voyage!

The concert was exceptional.  Here is the first video, showing a portion of the Blue Danube, one of my favorite classical pieces, ever since my father took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was just 7 years old (yeah, at 7 I had no idea what was going on in that movie).

They had an excellent Tenor during the concert, and his facial expressions said a thousand words!

My favorite bit of the concert was the give and take from the Tenor and the  Soprano!  If only I spoke German!

The next morning pretty much the entire ship had the same excursion to the Art Museum, and we had a really excellent art historian as a guide.  We were able to get into the museum before the general public, just another Uniworld perk, and trust me, this is a huge perk!  The line to get in when we were leaving was outrageous!

The most important painting (for her) was this one depicting Mary and her baby Jesus, with all of the worshipers bowing down to the priest to the left of the painting.  Back in that time period, one could only speak to God via the priest, not by simply praying, and this painting was showing that seemingly poor way of viewing religion, with the guy on the right pointing out “Ya know, this is the son of God, not that charlatan on the left”.

We had some free time in the museum, and I have to say we found three pieces we have heard of before, and were surprised to see here.  The first is the “Tower of Babel”, painted in 1563 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.  He actually made three versions of this painting, the first painted while he was in Rome, which was lost, while this is the second, referred to as the “Great” Tower of Babel, since it’s his largest version of the painting.  The third is in Rotterdam…and while we were in the city, we didn’t have time to visit the museum.  I love the detail in this painting!

The second work that we were impressed to see was this one by Johannes Vermeer, called the “Art of Painting”, which he painted from 1666-1668.  Vermeer is huge in the Netherlands, and this piece likely should have received more attention from our tour.  There are less than 100 pieces painted by Vermeer, and they are all considered masterpieces.

The third was actually recognized by our guide, briefly,  as the very first winter scene ever produced in a painting, “Hunters in the Snow”, another painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1565.  He was instrumental in painting winter scenes of ordinary people.  We even have a puzzle of one of his paintings at home!

While we loved the guide that took us around the museum, I’m a little bit surprised that she didn’t focus on two of these pieces, as they are huge in the art world.

We departed the museum and took a walking tour of Vienna.  While some of the spots were things we have seen previously, our guide pointed out some spots that were new to us.  I loved this clock tower that was part of the Hofburg palace that has a depiction of the current moon cycle (the full golden orb depicts that tonight was a full moon), as well as a sun dial that dates to the late 1600’s.

In the afternoon we had a culinary tour of Vienna, and while the culinary aspect of it was just so-so, the guide was excellent, and pointed out some interesting things we hadn’t seen previously.  First off, below is one of Vienna’s Fire Stations.  You could have fooled me!  They had to buy special fire trucks that could fit in the narrow doorways of this building.

He then pointed out this Holocaust Memorial, that he mentioned depicts books in a library facing inside out.  The books are meant to depict the countless victims of the Holocaust, and a reference to Jews as “People of the Book”.

Around the monument are inscriptions of the various concentration camps where the Jews were murdered.

We were walking fast but our guide pointed out this clock called the Ankeruhr.  It’s supposed to have moving figures and to play different composers every hour (maybe Walt Disney saw this way back when), but we were there right at the strike of 4:00 PM, and didn’t see anything.  I’ve heard since that the clock is typically 5 minutes slow.

The culinary tour hit the cellar of this wine shop, but we only got to taste one wine.  Now is that a wine tasting?  No!

I did like this wine quote however.

This is the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, and I don’t care how long the name is, it’s beautiful!

Back on our ship, this is the more modern part of Vienna.

This church was close to our ship, referred to as the Emperor’s Jubilee Church, since it was built in 1898 for the 50 year anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

That night we had an incredible performance by the Pressburger Duo, a musical Abbot and Costello of talent!  The songs were long, but here are some snippets.  Pressburger was the former name of Bratislava, the Capital of Slovakia.

This one used an instrument right out of Australia, but it’s local to Slovakia.

Next up, we visit Durnstein and Melk, both in Austria, with some wine tasting and an Abbey visit.