St Wolfgang - Vienna

Melk Abbey

Packed up the Kangoo and left this morning for our 3 and bit hour drive to Vienna straight down a big highway that runs East to West across Austria.  About 2 hours into our trip we saw this massive building off to the side of the road and took the nearest exit to go and scope it out.  Apparently it's the Melk Abbey and according to wikipedia one of the worlds most famous monastic sites.  I'm not sure what that means but it was mightily impressive.

As we were on a bit of a tight schedule to meet our hosts in Vienna we only had about an hour so we did a quick scab's tour of the complex poking our head in some doors and generally tried to avoid paying an entrance fee.

Stairwell - Melk Abbey

Quite an impressive building in the baroque style and still used to this day as a school for 900 pupils as well as serving other functions. (Church, conferences etc.)

We only stopped at this building because we could see it from the highway which prompted the question as to what else we were ignorantly driving by and missing out on.  Pushed that thought to the back of our minds as we've long come to the conclusion that you could spend years in just one country and not see all of it so why stress over it.

Got to Vienna bang on 12.30pm as promised and met our hosts at the apartment.  We are the first people to stay in their apartment since they listed it on the net so who knows what must have been going through their minds when the Kangoo pulled up with replete with boisterous children and packed to the rafters with all manner of sundry items.

The apartment looked quite ordinary on the outside but once up the stairs it looked like something from Better Homes and Gardens.  Easily the flashest apartment we've stayed in on our travels.  Probably too nice for us as we were afraid we'd break something or leave dirty fingerprints somewhere.

The apartment was on the outskirts of town but right next to a train station so we caught the train into town and went to the information centre.

Fresco in Melk Abbey

After we got loaded up on maps and brochures we walked out onto the street and were surrounded by magnificent buildings in every direction.  (The Vienna Opera house was right out the door of the info point.)  

We walked down a big pedestrian mall through the throng of thousands of people and made our way to the Hofburg Palace (Austrian Presidents house), and the Museums Quarter where there were Christmas markets.  We had a stroll around those for a while and looked at all the Christmas themed knick-knacks and managed to see a choir singing some Christmas carols.

In order to sell goods at these stalls you need a license.  From what I read it  is quite a convoluted process to get one as you have to prove that your goods are in demand, locally made, not sold elsewhere and are of high quality.  

The end result is a market selling goods that are actually worth buying instead of some cheap plastic Chinese rubbish that falls apart in 2 minutes flat.

A bit of quality control like that wouldn't go astray at home.

Hofburg Palace