Spring Break Adventures

Our spring break started right at Easter. We did baskets the Saturday before as usual and watched General Conference sessions on Sunday. Then Monday we got in the car and drove four hours into Austria. Our first stop was the city of Melk where the Abbey is known for their Baroque chapel.

The complex is huge. It's a working monastery, plus the tourist side to it, and a working day school with about 800 students. 

 

 

 

I love ceilings

 

The art on the outside was modern and interesting - everything else was pretty much Baroque. We actually learned at the Schönbrunn Palace that the reason so many buildings from the time period are painted yellow is because it represents and is close to gold.

 

View from the top!

There is an absolutely beautiful library inside (no pictures allowed). But the coolest part of it was that the windows were even covered by bookshelves but there were hidden doors set in so that you could open them and there was a table and chair set by the window where you could sit and have good light for your reading. We all thought that was cool! The church was pretty magnificent. I can see why it's considered one of the finest - all dark wood and gold and the tour guide informed us that one of the monks counted over 700 angels in the church.  

 

 

In German it's called Stift Melk because the Abbey was a gift from the ruling family of Austria to the Benedictines. In the front of the Abbey they had a small museum of it's history and treasures and as you walked through the word "höre" was emphasized - "listen."  I like it when religious sites (despite the tourism) emphasis the tenants of their religion and in this case how we need to listen to God.

 

We took a brief detour into the city afterwards on the hunt for ice cream and discovered there is a brand of beer in Austria that is spelled the way my name should be spelled . . . 

After Melk Abbey we had about an hour to our apartment in Vienna which turned out to be beautiful and spacious and in a quiet, residential neighborhood.  We were set up to start our Vienna adventures!