My tour group’s transfer from Salzburg to Vienna was nothing if not leisurely. Our bus first took us to the gigantic abbey at Melk, a typically imperialistic pile of stone decorated with heroic figures. Thence we boarded the “Austria,” a cruise boat that took us several miles downriver to a landing where we reunited with our bus. Both riverbanks were lined with vineyards, which got me remembering one of my favorite concierges and his disdain for German wines.

Norman Lazar was a thoroughgoing Quebecker who oversaw the guest operations at the Manoir Hovey, just north of the border. After my wife and I had been there a couple of times, he’d learned, to his horror, of my affection for German wines. He also remembered our dog’s name and welcomed us all with exquisite panache. On one memorable occasion he exclaimed, “Oh, Monsieur and Madame Lange, and the little Tucker, too! I’ve been looking forward to seeing you! Monsieur, I have a bottle of Liebfraumilch I’d been planning to use to start the fires, but I heard you were coming, so I saved it for you.” So I had fish for dinner that night.

The “Austria” dropped us off at a landing near the village of Dürnstein. We hiked to our bus and about an hour and a half later swept into the old imperial capital of Vienna. Because of regulations regarding narrow streets and large buses, we were dropped off a few blocks from our hotel. More hiking, while the staff, incredibly, ferried our luggage on brass hotel carts through traffic to the lobby. We got our keys, and as soon as we all managed to figure out that pressing “1” on the elevator took us to the third floor (don’t ask; I’m still not sure), we got into our rooms at last.

The next couple of days we spent gazing slightly awe-struck at the magnificent architecture of the old capital. It’s pretty clear that resources flowed substantially into Vienna from the hinterlands. The idea seemed to be to build the grandest palaces possible, with terraces here and there surrounded by stone railings with thousands upon thousands of turned stone balusters. More railings around the roofs, interrupted by heroic statues of war horses carrying human heroes armed with spear and sword and capped with winged helmets. No embellishment was spared.

The gulf between the wealthy and the rest of humanity then was at least as great as is ours today. The prince who commissioned the palaces (one of his daughters, Marie Antoinette, married the ill-fated Louis XVI) I’m sure that if I’d been a laborer — a mason, carpenter, gardener — in the days of the empire, I’d’ve been hanged, or worse, for insurrection. On the other hand, imagine the number of common people employed (presumably gainfully) in the construction and maintenance of all this elegance.

We visited the Spanish Riding School, where the Lipizzaner stallions are bred and trained, and perform in the galleried (more elegance) arena. The horses were having a day off, so we just visited them in their stalls while they looked out at us.

The high point of the tour for me (besides the lovely birthday party the group threw me the last evening in the village of Gumpoldskirchen) was an evening of chamber music by the Mozart Ensemble, a string quartet performing in a vaulted room that reportedly once saw Mozart himself perform while he lived a few months during 1781 in the house surrounding the hall. The plaster walls were decorated in Baroque imagery; just behind the quartet loomed a very lush Dionysus making merry. The quartet made merry, as well, musically. It was clear they liked and knew each other and the music very well. The violist and the cellist, apparently, were married. And the cellist did often what cellists do so infrequently; he smiled.

At mid-concert we adjourned to the cobbled courtyard for flutes of sparkling wine, then returned for “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and the “Emperor” Waltz. I’ve never known an hour and a half to pass so rapidly, and rarely so pleasantly. I’m pretty sure that, listening to music electronically, as we usually do, we forget the up-close and personal touch of sitting only an arm’s length from the musicians.

The last morning, as is usual with European tours, we rallied in the hotel lobby a little past 5 in the morning, collected bag lunches for the road, made sure our luggage was loaded for transfer to the bus and started our sleep-walking trek back to the entrance to the tube that would, about 12 hours later, deposit us into the loving arms of Boston traffic. The recovery from jet lag would begin.

But, as I reflect, we had a lovely trip through magnificent scenery, heroic architecture, fine art, lively people and probably the world’s most unselfconsciously fantastic beer.