I got a pretty early start to today. I was up just before 8. I pulled out my laptop and began to write the blogs for the past two days. But that took me far longer than I expected. And before I knew it, it was past 10 and we still hadn’t left or eaten breakfast.
We left soon afterwards and went to grab breakfast at Café Demel. We made our way past the crowd at the door and found a good amount of open tables on the second floor after walking past the bakery on the ground floor. The bakery smelled amazing, so I figured it had to be good. Breakfast was delicious. My coffee was especially good, the first I’ve had here that compared to my favorite coffee spots from Melbourne. There was some confusion in the translation of ordering my food though because I ended up with 2 strudels, one cherry and one apricot, when I thought I was ordering a cherry-apricot strudel. The waitress seemed ticked but took one away. The cherry strudel I was left with was great, as was Smith’s eggs and ham and coffee with orange liqueur.
After breakfast we headed to Schonnbrun to finish what we had started the day before. We took the tour of the palace, quite beautiful, and I’m sorry we couldn’t take pictures. The gallery was quite impressive, and the coolest part to me is the fact that it was built for Maria Theresia, an empress back in the, uh, I wanna say 17th century, but 300 years later it was the meeting point for Kennedy and Kruschev! And I walked there! I just think that’s awesome.
After the palace we walked through some of the gardens that we had missed the day before, or had seen, but only while running full speed through the pouring rain.
We also spent some time playing in the mazes of the garden. Only one of them was a true maze, the others were winding pathways through the hedges with little games or activities along the way.
Then we got back on the U-Bahn to head back to Stephansplatz to do some shopping. We took a break in the middle to eat at a café called Haas & Haas. Mrs. Moran had recommended it as the best apple strudel she’d had in town yet. It was very good, definitely better than the one we had at Café Central a couple days ago. I’m partial to cherry over apple so I might have to take that Demel cherry strudel if forced to choose. With the strudel, I got the Haus Coffee, which was hot chocolate, espresso, and whipped cream, very good. Meanwhile Smith got an Eiscoffee, which was a glass with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and a couple cookies, and a shot of espresso to pour over it all. He reports that it was quite tasty.
From there we grabbed a couple pastries from Demel for the ride tomorrow and another couple gifts before heading back to the Moran’s around 5. We got back in time to change before leaving for dinner at a heuriger. Along the way we saw some interesting buildings, including flak towers built by the Nazi's to withstand Allied bombing raids and any other attempts to dismantle it, and an artfully designed electricity generating incinerator. I must say it is quite strange to see a four-story austere concrete bunker amongst all the artfully decorated Vienna buildings, and with kids playing in a playground right next to it.
Now, a heuriger is a type of restaurant that grew out of a tradition of people picnicking up in the vineyards around town. People brought the food, and bought the wine. Enough people forgot food or got hungry that the vineyards began selling little bites of food, and soon enough many of them were becoming sort of buffet style restaurants. So we met up with some friends of the Morans and ate on the outskirts of town with them. Lots of wine, lots of food sampling and trading and passing around. Needless to say it was a good time had by all. The conversation ranged from US healthcare to Smith’s and my personal lives to shoe betrayal to 3D printers to how long of a drive Smith and I should expect tomorrow. For the record, they all seem to think we’re a bit crazy to start in Vienna and drive to the Grossglockner and over it in one day. But we’ll see. Google says we have 6.5 hours of driving and we’re trying to give ourselves 12 hours to do it.
We’ve returned to the Moran’s now for one last night here. We’ve got an early start in the morning, and I have to do all the driving (Smith can’t drive stick), so I need to get some sleep. If all goes according to plan, tomorrow night we’ll be in Italy.
No comments:
Post a Comment