NICE, ST PAUL & VIENNA

17 & 18 October:
Nice, St Paul de Vence and Vienna.We did our overnighter in Nice, and the next day we went up in the hills to Saint Paul de Vence. What a gem of a village,(thanks Angie for the tip) lodged in the hillside very old, very beautiful, and very wet. The day didn’t start too well with the GPS, which we though was powered through the cigarette lighter thing, wasn’t, and we didn’t charge it the night before, so it was very flat, so we had to find a map and go there, which we eventually did. Because it began to rain fairly steadily, we headed for a restaurant and sat and had some great food, GPS in tow and I charged it while we ate. It did the trick enough for us to use it for the rest of the afternoon, as we had 2 trips to the airport to make. So we said goodbye to Emma as she went to London, and then we went 2 hours later to Vienna.
We didn’t get into our Hotel till about 11.30pm, after catching a train lugging our bags up and down stairs again, to the underground, got out and stumbled our way to our hotel. Today we went on a river cruise up the Danube through the Wauchau Valley to Melk. The cruise was rally rated high, but for us it was disappointing,(mind you it was very foggy and low cloud all day, so we weren't getting the best scenery) but the place Melk has the most amazing Abbey, built and then modified a few times, the Benedictine Monks still work from here. It has housed the Ruling Families of Lower Austria, over the centuries. The tour was really enlightening the church was typical Baroque style, O.T.T. in its ornateness, but beautiful Frescos on the ceilings and dome. It has an amazing Library of both Religious and Science text books dating back over 1000 years, 10 rooms of them, still used today by Universities.