Vienna

July 3, 2009

We arrived in Vienna around 3:00pm after flying from Gatwick airport in London a couple of trains and subway rides brought us right into the city. Checked into our room at the hotel and walked around a little bit. We stopped into the royal crypt at the Capuchin Church. Unfortunately not too many of the pictures came out, but it was amazing there are 12 emperors, 17 empresses and multiple other royal family members. Oh and the nanny to Maria Theresia (the most famous of the Hapsburgs, and Marie Antoinette’s mother). Finally, we had some dinner and went to bed, very quiet and easy first day.

July 4, 2009

Happy Independence Day America, we started the morning with a tour of the Opera house. They perform 50 opera’s per season, seven days a week. The season lasts from August until June. They perform a different opera every night. The theater can seat 2,000 people and in February they take out the main seating lift the floor even with the stage and turn the Opera House into a giant ballroom. This is the annual State Ball, hosting 5,000 people. Part of the Opera house was destroyed during the bombings of WWII, so some areas are new and some are old. The Opera was first opened in the 1860’s and rumor has it that the emperor Franz Joseph likened it to a train station, causing architect Eduard van der Null to commit suicide. I don’t know if it’s true, but it was certainly amazing to see and spectacular in many ways.

Following our tour of the Opera we went to the Hofburg (the palace), to see the Imperial Apartments, the Treasury and the Silver and China department. We started with the Silver and China area, this consisted of multiple rooms and an enormous amount of silver, gilt pieces and porcelain, it was an amazing and mind boggling sight. Then we moved over to the imperial apartments that had been occupied by Franz Joseph and Elisabeth. Elisabeth is the most loved and in all her paintings we must admit she was quite the looker. In mine and Jessie’s opinion, she was a whiner and was probably a manic depressive or bi-polar. At any rate the Viennese absolutely love her and there is great legend surrounding her. They call her Sisi and she was amazing and beautiful. The apartments were great to see and they were quite lovely. Throughout our visit here we have been unable to take pictures in some of the palaces and were not allowed to take photographs in the imperial apartments. Then we went over to the treasury where we did get to take some photographs. Got to see Charlemagne’s crown and a holy spear, which at one time was believed to have been part of the “spear of Longinus”. It has been disproved as that spear as much of the metal has been dated to the 13-14th century.

We happened upon some riders from the Spanish riding school and the Hofburg marching band, those were great fun to stumble upon.


July 5, 2009

Adrian had us get up at the crazy hour of 6:30am to catch a bus and train to the city of Krems, because he had read that it was a village well worth walking around and seeing. Of course, today being Sunday……it is Europe after all and Austria still has a strong religious feel to it. After getting a bite to eat and wandering around the town for a bit, we went down to catch the Ferry for a cruise on the “Blue Danube”. Yeah, the river is a very muddy brown and reminds me in many ways of the Mississippi. The cruise was gorgeous and the scenery along the river wonderful, after 3 hours you arrive in the village (town) of Melk, where there is an amazing Benedictine Abbey. We toured the abbey and as you will see by the pictures, the Monks are quite spoiled. At least that’s what Jessie says. It is incredibly ornate and large. We determined that the Benedictines clearly never took a vow of poverty. Then we caught the train back to Vienna. Off and on all day we managed to miss the rain, which apparently came down quite hard at times. But it never really stayed long enough to cool things off for any length of time. When we got back into the city of Vienna, we had lots of time so we decided we would do the hop on hop off bus tour. It was halted halfway through because of the “Pride Parade” we can now say that we have managed to see it in 4 countries; Italy, France, USA, and Austria. Not sure how we always manage to time our trips to pride but we do. So we walked through the end zone of the festivities and got to see a little of the parade. We had dinner at the old Palm house, which was the Hothouse for the Hofburg.


July 6, 2009

We got up and went to Schonbrunn Palace today; this was the summer palace of the Hapsburgs and was meant to rival Versailles. Doesn’t get mine and Jessie’s vote – we still like Versailles better, but it was pretty spectacular and had lots to see and do. We started out touring the rooms in the palace that the public are allowed into. One of the rooms belonged to Marie Antoinette. I can’t remember if she was born at the Hofburg or Schonbrunn. There was a room in the palace called the millions room, because it cost that much to decorate. One of the really amazing and cool things about the Viennese palaces is, instead of fireplaces in all the rooms, they had ceramic stoves in the corners and these stoves heated the entire room. There was a passage way behind the walls and that’s how the stoves were loaded with their wood, etc. The gardens at Schonbrunn were beautiful and we walked up to the top where there is a café and you could have lunch. Then we went to the palaces zoo, they had an amazing zoo and it is supposedly the oldest in the world having been started as a menagerie in the 1700’s. As we were just finishing up the zoo and heading to the carriage museum the skies opened up and it was pouring. We darted into the gift shop and bought umbrellas and ponchos. We were soaked by the time we made it to the carriage house. We did our tour of the carriage house, again no picture taking was allowed. When we were done with that tour it had stopped raining and we walked over to the bakery where we watched a presentation on making Apfelstruddel, (i.e. Apple Strudel). This came with a free taste – it was lovely – bought the recipe book and will definitely be making some at home. We came out to catch the subway back to our end of town and it was pouring again. There was some wonderful Thunder and Lightening to go along with the rain showers. We grabbed some take away (pizza and kebap food) so we could go back to our room and dry out. After some dinner and the rain stopping we ventured back out to the Hotel Sacher for the “Original Sacher Torte”. It’s very rich and yummy cake that’s made here. The pastries and breads are amazing here.

July 7, 2009

Today we got to sleep in – 8:00am wake up. Actually, Adrian and I were up at 8:00am, he went off for a long walk, while I jumped in the shower. At 9:30 he still was not back so I got Jessie up and we went down for breakfast. He joined us about 9:45am; once his breakfast was over we meandered over to the Hofburg. We had tickets for an 11:00a.m morning exercise display at the “Spanish Riding School”. This is where the Lipizzaner stallions are trained and shown. We had been told that it would only be a 1 hour exercise show of the young horses and mares, because the stallions are off in the summer pastures enjoying a holiday. However, we got lucky, they not only did some showing of antique imperial carriages and the horses that pull them, but brought in some of the 3 year old colts from the pastures (they start training the stallions at 3.5 years of age). And they brought in some of the mares and their new foals. It was a wonderful show and we learned lots of interesting things. One of which was that all of the Lipizzaner are dark until they are about 6 years old, that’s when they fade to their grey or white color.

Searching out some lunch at what appeared to be less of a tourist place and more of a local hangout. Lunch was fantastic I had amazing Goulash soooo yummy. We headed over to the Neu Burg (new palace) to see the arms and armor museum. Of course, they are closed on Tuesdays, so we headed over to the Natural History Museum; oh they’re closed for renovation. So, we found our way to the most amazing outdoor market. I truly wish we had something along those lines in Ireland where we are living. The fruits and veg were so incredible. We bought some raviolis and pesto to bring back to our apartment to cook for dinner with pesto. Mm its ok, the pesto is a little strong but the raviolis themselves were ok. Found some very delicious bread to go with it.

July 8, 2009

Today our last day in Vienna, Adrian arranged for us to go on a sightseeing tour of the “Vienna Woods”. There were three stops on the tour. The first stop was at Mayerling, currently a nunnery and small chapel, formerly a hunting lodge belonging to the Crown Prince Rudolph. He was Sissi and Franz Joseph’s only son and apparently committed “murder suicide, killing his 17 year old mistress and himself. He was 31 when he died. Although the story is interesting there isn’t really anything to see in this site, you get to see the original coffin his mistress was buried in and a room with some pictures and a copy of his suicide note. They rush you through the place in about 15 minutes, but I believe it is how the Carmelite’s there support themselves, because they have a tour running through every 15 minutes. From there we went to a Cistercian Monastery, still monks living and working there, 61 to be exact. That was beautiful and the tour was very informative. The Church of the monastery also holds the remains of the Babenberg rulers who came before the Hapsburgs. The final stop on the tour was the Hinterbruhl Bei Wien Seegrotte. So, Hinterbrhul Bei Wien means Hinterbrhul in Vienna and Seegrotte is an underground lake. The lake was created in an old Gypsum Mine. In 1912, one of the tunnels in the lowest level of the mine collapsed and 20,000,000 liters of water flooded the entire level, from then the mine was shut down. In 1932 it was reopened as a display mine for tourists. In 1944 a subterranean airplane factory was established in the mine and some 2000 workers, many from the concentration camps constructed the first jet fighters there. In 1945 the Germans demolished the mine and factory. And later was reclaimed by the Austrian Republic and finally reopened as a tourist attraction. Now in order to keep the mine open as a tourist attraction and the level of the lake steady water must be pumped out nightly. There are 7 natural springs bringing the water into the lake which has no natural outflow. Nothing lives in the water and it is amazingly clear. There is a dragon standing near the boat dock when you get there for your ride on the lake. It is leftover from the last production of the Musketeers’ movie with Keifer Sutherland.
We came out of the mine had a hot dog, which means two long frankfurters on a plate with spicy brown mustard. If you want a hot dog in a bun in Austria, you must order a frankfurter. It’s very interesting. Then the bus ride back into the city of Vienna. As we were back into the city by 3:00pm we felt we had time to go to the Arms and Armor Museum which had been closed the day before. It was amazing and overwhelming, I wondered at one point how much armor one man could have really needed as many of the suits belonged to Maximillian I. It was crazy, but a very cool display, housed in the same museum was a collection of ancient and semi modern musical instruments and a collection from the digs at Ephesus. When we left the museum, I realized that it was only 4:45 and we would be passing the Spanish Riding School. One of the things they had told us the day of our show was that they had set up a “meadow” in the courtyard of the stables and every afternoon at 5:00pm they led the mares and their foals into it so they could still feel they were out at Piber. So we stayed to watch the foals and their mares and got some great shots of them playing. For our last dinner in Vienna we went in search of…..Italian food. Yes, we feel compelled to find Italian food in every city we visit. It was good food not spectacular.

July 9, 2009

As our flight did not leave until 1:00pm we got up, had some breakfast, and took a final walk around the city. Stopped into the Swarovski store, they are headquartered in Vienna. Did you know that OPEC is also headquartered in Vienna? The weather had been lovely for this trip and we had a very good 6 days.

Things I loved about Vienna, Wiener schnitzel, Ice Cream, Coffee, Hot dogs, Goulash, the look and feel of the city and the weather. Things I did not love about Vienna, it’s very expensive even by EU standards, and some of the people were rude not a lot though. And airport security was crazy, we went through 3 different check points Boarding card and ID were checked at the first 2, with your picture being taken at the 2nd location. Then you went through x-ray portion right at your gate, which did not seem so bad, until they changed the gate and you had to do so all over again. That was crazy. However, I think it was by far the easiest airport to go through security.
When we got to Gatwick, they seemed to have some new security procedures in place; they also took our picture when they checked our boarding pass and passport. When we got to the next step where you take your computer out etc., walk through the machine, it beeped for virtually every person who walked through, so you got a pat down. Then separately we took your shoes off and walked through again at a second location, all they were scanning at this location was the shoes. When we got to our gate, we went through a further checkpoint and that actually brought up the picture that had been taken at the first check point. Then we stepped over to yet another attendant who took our pass and checked our passport one more time. As we boarded the plane the attendant there had to sign our remaining half of the boarding pass. It was very crazy and we looked to see if anything had happened since we had left the week before, as we did not go through all of this last Thursday, but nothing. It was the most screening we had ever been through.

So, that’s it for now the Scaletti’s arrive tomorrow and my niece and sister Next week.
Enjoy the pictures.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12938045@N02/3713030420/