Still cold and wet

Friday, Oct. 16 9:30 am local time. Thursday was even colder – 2 °C (35 °F) than Wednesday and just as windy, perhaps even more so. But the rain held off for the morning. We spent the morning in Melk, an Austrian town known for its Benedictine Abbey on a cliff and for its Apricot Schnapps. The Abbey is magnificent and I took many, many pictures. I even took flash pictures when you weren’t supposed to because the light level inside was too low for my Canon G-10 to even focus and the gift shop didn’t have a disc of digital pictures. The most magnificent areas are the Library with its gold-leaf embossed leather bound volumes

Gallery of books from Main Library

and the abbey church with its heavy use of gilt.

Nave of Abbey Church

I took a few pictures of the very picturesque village of Melk from the abbey balcony because it was too cold to walk back to the ship through town. I bought a small bottle of Apricot liquor that is made from the local apricots. As we left Melk, the sun was peeking out occasionally, but as we are sailed from Austria toward Germany, the sun alternated with periods of heavy rain.

Today we are in Passau in Bavaria (part of southern Germany). Passau is a beautifully situated city at the confluence of three rivers: the Danube, the Ilz and the Inn. The weather is still cold and drizzly, but the wind seems to have finally died down a bit. I will skip the scheduled walking tour and either just stay aboard and dry, or walk around on my own. It’s just too hard trying to take pictures under these conditions.

Oct 16, 2009

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