A beautiful staircase inside Melk Abbey, oddly enough, located in Melk, Austria.
Many visitors to the Melk Abbey are anxious to see the vast library of over 100,000 books or the castle like structure with 365 windows, one for each day of the year. Many came to see the golden Fall colors along the Danube. I came only to see the ornate spiral staircase. Our tour guide immediately proclaimed photos were not allowed throughout the Abbey, so I was quite worried the entire tour. It turns out, the staircase is seen after the tour, so photos were thankfully not a problem.
Fall Colors Along the Danube
The valley is quite narrow in many spots, leaving little land for housing or farming.
Houses, farms and vineyards line the Danube, only one residence deep. Residents have the Danube in front of them and no neighbors behind them. Many vineyards are growing up the steep mountainous hillsides. These hillside vineyards are frequently interrupted by hundred year old castles.
Castle along the Danube. Many date to the 1300’s.
Cloudy foggy days are likely the norm here in the Fall. It was a very relaxing and a pleasant trip to have some hot drink in hand and sit out on the top deck, watching the beautiful scenery pass by. There was always always something interesting to see. So in many ways it was more entertaining than an ocean cruise looking out at endless ocean.
These arching trees could hardly have been much more perfect for a photo from the boat.
A Catholic and a Greek Orthodox church stand nearly side by side.
Duck Under the Bridges
On some river cruises, the water level is so high the Viking longboats cannot safely pass under the bridges. The passengers must pack up, leave the boat and get bussed to another section of the river to board another longboat, over and over. We had no such troubles, but at times the upper deck was closed when the bridges were low. At other times the pilot house had to be dropped below deck. See the video below.
Everybody knows those Swiss Radars are the very best….
Melk Abbey
Melk Abbey and its large courtyard. Despite many interesting rooms, I only wanted to get to the spiral staircase.
This was not the view of the staircase I was after. However, the tour guide assured me I would get a better view later in the tour.
Staircase at Melk Abbey
Looking up the beautiful Melk Abbey staircase. These are focus stacked photos to get it all in focus. Of course the common phone camera today can do this in one shot. Not so with the bigger, more expensive, less versatile 35mm cameras.
More Staircases and Ornate Buildings
I search out great stair cases wherever we go. Often I’ll randomly walk into building after building to see if they have a good staircase.
Trees with Buildings Behind Them….
The contrast of the trees with bright buildings behind them became a theme for me. I have many photos of simply a tree with a building behind it. Oh… the fun you will have if you stick around through the end of this journey and my blogs.
The Rorschach Test Section of the Danube River
What kind of a polluted section of river are they taking us through? For a great distance, we had suds floating by our boat. Of course these Rorschach Inkblot test images formed nice abstract designs, so I enjoyed them immensely.
I see a dragon. What do you see?
Here we clearly have a roadrunner on top of a wheel and a deer sticking out its tongue.
Brought to you by the letters ‘A’ and ‘L’.
I see faces everywhere… another deer and a rabbit.
Goodnight from our Fall tour exploring the colors of the Danube River in Austria.
We will navigate through over 50 river locks. Oh, what fun we are going to have. I filmed many of these…. Here are some leaves stuck to the mossy wall of one of the many river locks.
