Grand Circle River Tour 14: Melk Abbey [Sky Watch Friday]

As I noted in last week’s posting, our ship was not able to risk sailing further on the  Danube [Donau] due to the low water level. So, while we again went by bus to our next destination, the 900 year old baroque Abbey of Melk in Austria, our luggage was transported to a hotel just outside of Vienna [Wien], where we would stay the remaining two nights of our trip.
The Abbey became a Benedictine monastery in 1089 and a center for medieval scholarship. Its library contains more than 70,000 books and 2,000 manuscripts. The other rooms were breathtakingly ornate, so much so that I thought it ‘obscene’. Photography was strictly verboten, so I cannot document the interior, but I have several shots of the surrounding area.