I am considering a stop to see Melk Abbey on June 1, as we are enroute by train from Vienna to Munich. I'm looking at a 7:41 departure from Vienna, which will leave us at the Melk train station at 9:04 a.m. Allowing 4 hours to see the Abbey and perhaps have lunch at the restaurant or cafe in the Orangerie, we would catch the 1:20 p.m. train to Munich, to arrive about 6:15.

Is four hours to see the Abbey and have lunch enough? Too much?

According to Rick Steves, lockers would be available at the train station to store our luggage. Have any of you had experience with that?

Four hours is a little tight - but certainly you can see the Abbey and have a light lunch. If you take the tour (which I think you must) it is about 1 hour, 15 minutes in duration. The only problem you might have is waiting for the next English tour unless you are lucky with your timing. Not sure about the lockers in the train station, but I am sure they must have them. Enjoy the Abbey, it is a beautiful place.

4 hours is enough time for a visit to Melk Abbey and lunch.( Also several good places in the town to eat also)
Remember that the Abbey is a 15 minute walk from the station and rquires a short climb up hill.Of course the return.
Melk is not on the main train line from Vienna and Salzburg. Your trip Vienna ( Sudbahnhof for this particular train) to Melk requies no change of train , but your afternonn train to Salzburg probably requires a change in St. Polten,

I do not know about lockers at the station in Melk. Melk is not really a big place.
I would assume they are there as many arrive by train to visit the Abbey.

Thank you, Steven and Molker. It sounds like a 4-hour stopover in Melk would work out for us. We don't plan to take the tour, because it's at 2:55, to late for us to manage. I don't want to leave Vienna any later to catch the tour, because it would put us into Munich too late.

I got the train times from www.bahn.de. The train does depart from Sudbahnhof. The continuation to Munich includes a change at Amstetten and a change at Salzburg.

Hi Mary,

You may want to check about the tour. I don't know that they let you in to look for yourself (it is a working monastery and school). You may be able to look around the outside but you might miss the Church and the libary (which is the best part).

Steven, Steven, Steven... You cut me to the quick. Well, little do you know my obsessive-compulsive nature. They definitely do allow one to visit without a tour. I checked their webiste:

http://www.stiftmelk.at/englisch/

Thank you, however, for your thoughtfulness in posting.

Hello Mary,

I stand corrected. When I was there recently it struck me that they were very careful to keep people herded into tour groups. There did not seem to be many "civilians" walking about.
Enjoy.

4 hours is just right I would say. Gives you a chance for a tour and have some lunch too. (I think I have some pictures of the abby. I will put them up on my new website www.BeautifulAustria.com when my complete overhaul is done. (Hopefully in a few weeks. Sigh! ).

If you have any chance at all then try to drive throught the lake region east of Salzburg (look for a town called St.Wolfgang on the map). It's about an hour east of Salzburg and lovely!

If you are going towards Vienna, then don't miss out on the region called "Wachau". Try the 1 hour hike up to the castle in Duernstein. The view from up there is absolutely amazing!

Enjoy the trip!

A tour is not essential to sse the abbey church and the library. We did it without a tour.

There are in fact 64 steps leading up to the Abbey--that takes a little extra time. But I don't think you need to take a tour; buy a guide at the bookship and use that as you go through. You will then be able to go at your own pace rather than being tied to a group's. I think you can easily see the Abbey in 2 hours.

When I visited Melk, I spent 3.5 hours including the visit to the Abbey and a quick beisl lunch. I did not feel rushed doing this. I stopped enroute to Vienna from Salzburg.

Platzman, what's a "beisl lunch?"

Underhill, "64 steps?" Next on my list of things to do in preparing for our trip is the BIG UGLY: "GET IN SHAPE!" Think the Movie "Rocky," with me at the top of the steps jumping up and down and shadow boxing to that great theme music.

If you plan to use the station's lockers, bring small suitcases. Large luggage lockers (if available) are limited in supply and virtually always taken--I have yet to come into a train station with popular tourist attractions (like Melk Abbey) where there are vacant large lockers. In this particular instance, you'd do far better to have two small suitcases than one big one (one small suitcase would be even better). Note the abbey's web site says it has lockers at its entrance. You might consider emailing them to see if there are other luggage storage options (a coat check area will sometimes hold visitors' luggage) in case the lockers are full. It would be a shame if your visit to the abbey was scuppered by lack of storage space for your luggage.