Breakfast was at Coben's again: still good, still a lovely view.
We had a commitment to meet at 1230 - a train to Melk. So we looked to fill the morning with local short-term plans - which turned out to mean visiting Giles's churches in the immediate area. There were, rather inevitably, several. The first of these, Sarah reminds me, was Annakirche. I try to photograph the nameplates on the way in so I don't forget the sequence, but clearly I don't always remember ... Next was the Franziskanerkirche (I remembered to photograph the nameplate on that one). They seemed to be preparing for a service (a clergyman was passing out papers to each pew) so we didn't stay long. Next was the Jesuitenkirche - somewhat memorable for one of the more bizarre conceits in churches, a trompe l'oeil dome. That is ... a piece of flat ceiling that's been painted to trick the eye into seeing a large dome rising above you. Which works great when you enter the church, but when you walk further in and look back, the perspective goes disastrously wrong ... The same church was in possession of one of the most impressively over-decorated pulpits - multiple figures, chains of leaves, all covered in gold leaf. Aside from the fake dome, some of the other trompe l'oeil work there was very nice.
Our next stop was Morawa, the bookstore with the largest English language selection in the city (not all that large, although the store is very big). Although what most struck me while there was that a significant selection of Marvel graphic novel bundles are clearly being translated into German ...
Our visit to Peterskirche was only partly successful: we were able to enter the building, but there was a service in progress which meant I was uncomfortable, and we couldn't get a good look at the place. So I hope to get back there later.
For our train to Melk, Sarah had received an email telling her it was delayed. We got to the train station early, and showed the email to the woman at the information booth. She opened with "this is not our problem" (I kid you not), but then proceeded to be quite helpful (I surmised, perhaps unkindly, that she was grumpy about being forced to speak English). It took her a while to decipher: this was apparently a popular line, and normally the 1225 was TWO trains, but one was delayed or cancelled so the second was over-full. She recommended that we take the earlier train as we were quite early. So we made straight for the platform and caught the 1155. We had to change trains at Sankt Pölten, where we had about ten minutes - which we filled by buying lunch at a cafeteria-like store that turned out to have surprisingly decent sandwiches. And they had Fanta - have I mentioned how much BETTER European Fanta is than North American Fanta? (I have, in years past, but most of you probably haven't heard this particular rant. The European stuff tastes almost like oranges, not the artificial crap the Americans sell in America and Canada. The history of Fanta from Wikipedia at the link given was an interesting read, but cogent to my appreciation "The Orange flavor recipe outside the US contains orange juice and the American version has none.")
We stopped in a supermarket in Melk and I picked up Paprika chips. Sadly, they weren't as good as the Paprika Bugles - the flavour of the Bugles worked exceptionally well with the Paprika.
Someone built a fort on a hill in Melk sometime back around 1080. A long damn time ago. It became a monastery. It fell down, it was rebuilt on the foundations. It burned. It was rebuilt. The main point - it's still there, and it's really lovely high above the small town of Melk and the Donau River. Between the train station and the Donau river was a small ... tributary, stream? and a largish island. We walked across the island (with the lovely smell of the woods in our noses) to catch a glance of the Donau before we had to turn back to make the abbey in time for our 1500 English language tour.
The abbey is a massive structure - I think the tour guide said 4.8 hectares for the buildings, and that's without considering the gardens. I decided (based on no facts or evidence at all) that the building was painted in orange and cream stripes because one of their biggest products is apricot nectar and apricot liquor. (The apricot nectar is A) a favourite of Sarah's, and B) lovely.) The tour takes you through 20-30 rooms of this massive structure - most notable among them for the two of us, the library. I was stymied by one of my most hated tourist site policies: no photography. But ... how can I remember it if I don't have pictures?! <sigh> So I have pictures of the outside and the gardens, but not the inside of their ancient gorgeous library. The library turns out to consist of ten rooms, of which we only saw two, and about 100,000 volumes, nearly all of them at least a couple centuries old.
photo: Looking up some spiral stairs at Melk Abbey
The huge church - which doesn't so much "dominate" one of the courtyards as squeeze out all possibility of any other use for said courtyard - has what I've come to refer to as "overflowing ceilings" (for lack of a better term). Some areas of church ceilings tend to be plain-ish patterns painted on supporting members - the arches and the like. But to emphasize the divinity of the cherubs and saintly figures painted between the arches, sometimes they overflow their space and take over part of that patterning. This church makes significant use of that trope. It also has enough gold leaf to finance a small country for several years. It's more than a little garish - in kind of a wonderful way.
We then made a loop around the large hilltop gardens. The first part was a very mannered European garden with open grass, symmetrically aligned topiary trees, and a lovely old pavilion (which now houses a café and art display under its strange frescoes). But then there's the "forest." If you don't look too closely, it's just a piece of European woodland. But in the paths and additional furnishings and open spaces and artworks, I felt a level of control by humans over nature that approached the obsessiveness of a Japanese garden. Which I love, and I liked this a lot too. But I may have been reading more into it than was actually there.
On the other side of the hill was the herb garden, which also had some lovely flowers (in early October). It wasn't particularly big, but very nice.
We walked back down through the town to the train station and caught the next train headed for St Pölten. I have to say, Austria has an excellent train experience: fast, quiet, comfortable, and above all - well documented at every step. In under an hour (and in comfort) we were back at Wien Hauptbanhof (train station).
We decided to go to the Naschmarkt again - there's a bierhalle there I wanted to visit. The Naschmarkt at night transforms into a multiple-block long very lively row of indoor-outdoor restaurants, it's quite wonderful. I haven't got a handle on the exact geography yet, but I think one of its two laneways is mostly food sellers, and the other laneway is mostly restaurants. I may have that wrong.
Sadly, it was to be an evening of disappointments: at the Bierhalle, at 1945, we were told they was closing! Then we headed to a place called Vanella that does gelato about a block from our hotel and is very highly rated on Google Maps ... where we found it gutted for "winter renovations." (It was 27°C here yesterday ...) I got a Vienna-made barley wine at a local high end wine store to drink, and we got pistachio cannoli from the previously mentioned Italian place nearby. The cannoli was ... too sweet, but otherwise okay. The barley wine was also kind of mediocre. But we had a quiet hour sitting in the rather nice hotel courtyard cleaning up our future plans.