One Last Hurrah in Vienna

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 17^th 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.

Splashing Through Vienna

Yesterday, I woke up a little earlier than Smith in the hopes of blogging about our incredible adventures the day before, but I got caught up in transferring pictures and video between memory cards and computer, and computer and external hard drive.  I have almost 250GB of video and pictures so far from this trip!

After another amazing breakfast from Mrs. Moran of eggs, sausage, bagels and a piece of chocolate cake, we headed off to see the Prater.  First, we grabbed the Straussbahn (the overground version of their public transportation) and rode without paying for just a couple stops to get to a full station where we could buy a ticket good for unlimited public transportation for the day.  Arriving at the Prater, we walked through and saw the rides, including the very old ferris wheel, and bumper cars, bumper cars, and more bumper cars.  We walked out of the park to see the Danube.  We walked along the Danube for a stretch and then turned away from the river to get back to a U-Bahn station.  We took the U-Bahn in to the Rathaus to get food.  Smith got noodles and I got Indian, which was tasty, but turned out to be a poor choice.

After lunch we walked back to the Hofburg complex to take the tour of the Lippizaner stables.  We saw the world’s largest oval horse walk, which is a mechanical device used to force the horses to get some exercise as they have little space to run around here in the city.  We saw the horses in their stables, but were not allowed to take pictures of them or touch them.  I didn’t think that would be difficult, but then the horse whose stall I was leaning against turned around, walked right up next to me, stuck his nose partway through the bars, looked at me for a bit, and then blew hot air onto my arm from about 2 inches away.  But I resisted the urge to pet him.  We also go to see the Winter Riding Hall, which is where the Lippizaner shows are held.  Interesting fact, you can buy a Lippizaner stallion for pretty cheap, about $6000.  But the saddles for the Lippizaners chosen to be in the show are custom made for each horse and rider and run about $8000.

After the tour, I made an Indian food-related stop off at the bathroom, and then we headed off to Schonnbrun palace.  We took the U-Bahn, got there about 4, and were told that they were sold out of tickets to see the palace.  No matter, we figured we’d walk the gardens.  And we did for a bit, until the Indian food hit me again.  A 50-euro cent visit to the park restroom and we headed off again, started exploring, made our way to see the Gloriette arcade at the top of the hill overlooking the gardens.

Then it started to rain.  And we were as far as you can possibly be from the palace, and hence, the U-Bahn station.  But there was a café there, so we settled down to a beer to wait out the rain.  I read some in the book I was planning on reading in the gardens, and we waited about 30 minutes.  The rain slowed down, and the skies seemed to clear, so we packed up and headed down the hill with plans to explore just a bit more before heading to the U-Bahn.

Those plans were quickly dashed, as not 2 minutes after leaving the safety of the arcade, the water began to fall thick and fast.  I wish we could have captured video and pictures of us running through the Schonnbrun gardens in the pouring rain, because it’s probably the most memorable moment so far.  But, alas, I didn’t have my waterproof GoPro backdoor, so I had to put it away once the rain got really bad.

We paused for a bit once we made it back to the palace and waited for the rain to slow.  From there we made our way to the U-Bahn station and proceeded to form puddles of water underneath us as we stood on a U-Bahn, a Straussenbahn, and then a streetcar, before running from the streetcar stop to the Morans’ apartment.  We showered and decided to spend the night in.   I spent some time looking for places to stay in Croatia and we had dinner with the Moran’s: chicken tetrazzini, salad with apples, tomato, and avocado, biscuits, and some super-chocolatey brownies.  We lingered for a while after dinner, snacking on brownies, drinking, and talking, everything from US soccer development to nuclear energy research progress.

Finally around midnight we went to bed.

Best Day So Far

Author’s note: This post covers the day of July 18^th.  I wrote it on the morning of July 20^th.

It might be a little early to start ranking the days as to which one was best, but Wednesday was pretty awesome.  We woke up around 8:30 and Mrs. Moran served us coffee, sausage, eggs, and banana bread for breakfast.  IN-CREDIBLE!

After cleaning up from breakfast, I spent close to an hour posting all the blogs that I had written the day before while Smith planned out our day (dangerous, I know).  We started by walking towards the city center.  The first major building we came to was the Staatsoper, the opera house.  The opera is off for the summer, as are many of the main attractions, probably because very few buildings have A/C, and it does get much hotter here than in the Netherlands.  Plus, in the long ago before A/C existed, and without the summer tourist season, it probably made a lot of sense to have the  opera offseason during the summer, and tradition has carried on.

But, an orchestral group gives concerts on a roughly every other night schedule, so we bought tickets for later that evening.  I was so excited the rest of the day.  I was going to get to see Mozart performed by an orchestra IN the Vienna Opera House!  Turns out, a lot of people want to do the same, because the rest of the day we were accosted at all of the major tourist attractions by wigged and costumed men and women asking, “Would you like to see a Mozart concert? Interested in a Mozart concert?”

After the Staatsoper, we walked to the Stephansdom (read: Stef-ens-dome) and saw that.  A nice cathedral with one impressive tower.  I started with the camera and then gave it to Smith, but I thought it was funny that we both noticed that the banister on the spiral staircase up to the pulpit was topped with lots of small frog sculptures, and found these to be picture-worthy.

After seeing Stephansdom inside and out, well, the inside that you don’t have to pay for, we walked through more streets loaded with luxury brand stores to reach the Hofburg complex.  The Hofburg complex is a very large series of buildings, some interconnected, some not, with gardens filling the extra space.  There we purchased tickets to tour the Lippizaner horse stables, but not for the show, because once again they were on break for the summer.  We then continued to walk around and see more of the Hofburg complex including the National Library where Hitler stood over 70 years ago and declared “the unification of Germany and Austria”.  

From there we walked to the 2 nearby museums, Natural History and Art, and took pictures from the outside.  We’ll see if we get to either of them.  Then we walked through some more of the Hofburg complex gardens to get to a place for lunch over by the Stephansdom called Bettelstudent.  It was recommended by the guide book we are borrowing from the Moran’s, and it…was…delicious!  This place was near the Stephansdom, but just far enough away that it was basically all locals.  I asked the waitress what she recommended between two dishes, and the one she recommended was awesome.  It was thick, juicy, perfectly cooked pork (I hesitate to call them “medallions” like the menu did because they were so big), served with an amazing mushroom cream sauce and some multicolored noodles about the size of small shells.  The beer was, of course, great too.  Smith got a very solid wiener schnitzel as well.

After lunch we walked north and found the Café Central, a very beautifully restored early 20^th century café.  We had coffee (mine with orange liqueur, Smith’s with Mozart liqueur) and an apple struedel with vanilla sauce.  Plate-licking good!

From there we walked to the Burgtheater and got there just in time for them to start their tour in English, so we jumped on that.  We didn’t get to see inside the theater because it was being used for a play rehearsal at the time, but we did get to see the two impressive staircases replete with Gustav Klimt paintings.  Besides, the staircases are the important part because they are original, the stage and seating part of the theater burned to the ground during World War 2.

After the Burgtheater we crossed the street to see the Rathaus, which is their government administration building.  The center of its face is currently covered by a large white screen used for showing movies during their summer film festival.  And the courtyard space between the Rathaus and the Burgtheater is filled with food and drink vendors as well.  Mrs. Moran told me that this is where they have the popular Christmas market and other city events, so it sounds like this space is almost never vacant.

After seeing the Rathaus, we walked north to see a couple other churches, but might have gotten a bit greedy, because we found ourselves having to do a bit of powerwalking to try to get to the place we had picked for dinner so that we would have time to get ready for the Mozart concert.  We ate at Salmbrau, which is a brewery-restaurant that the Moran’s recommended to us.  I had a toasted bread covered with a pimento-sausage topping, and Smith had a ham, cheese lasagna kind of thing.

After a second beer each, we headed back to the Moran’s apartment.  I ironed the pants of my suit, showered, and shaved.  Smith was far more relaxed about this concert than I, so he went in a polo and jeans.  It turns out most people treat the Mozart concert more like Smith than me, although there were a handful of other people that had dressed up for the occasion.  We walked to the Staatsoper, getting there a little early so we could take pictures around the interior.  Our seats were decent, high, middle but a little to the left when looking at the stage, and second row in our balcony section.  The balcony partially obstructed our view of the stage, so we had to lean forward if we wanted to see the conductor and first violin.

I really enjoyed the show.  I was burning up in my suit, so I dropped the jacket and tie.  I was still sweating, but enjoyed it nonetheless.  Smith enjoyed it too, but was a little more bothered by the overzealous tourists than I was.  One lady walked down the aisle and stood there next to us watching for a bit until the one of the other spectators came down the aisle and told her to go back to her seat.   They performed a variety of different pieces, some orchestral, some converted from piano sonatas, some opera with help from one female and one male singer that changed costumes to fit their part a couple times.  My favorite was the performance of, what according to my iTunes library is called, Piano Sonata 11.

After the concert ended and we had to be ushered out because I still wanted to take pictures and bask in the post-Mozart glow.  From there, we walked in the direction that Smith said would take us to the Rathaus.  Turned out it was not.  So, I insisted we hope on the U-Bahn, the underground metro, instead of trying to walk anymore as my feet were beginning to hurt after an entire day of walking and an hour of walking in dress shoes.  We got to the Rathaus just as the opera they were showing on the big screen was ending, so we got to hear the final number as we bought beers from the Ottakrunger stand and scrounged what seemed to be two of the few spare chairs left.  After the opera was over, they turned on the lights on the Rathaus and made the scene even more epic.  It was a great end to a great day.  A couple beers, including a kirschbier that tasted like someone had managed to expertly meld the flavors of an amber malty brew and a Dr. Murphy’s Black Cherry soda, the tunes of Mozart running through my head, and the amazing lit Rathaus in view.  That was nice.

Unfortunately, we weren’t anywhere near home.  Just after midnight we began our walk home.  We used a streetcar for the final leg of the journey, but we still didn’t make it back until 12:45.

Then, we crashed.  Exhausted, but incredibly content.