Vienna - Day 4

Our last full day in Vienna had a couple of things on the agenda - the Belvedere Palace and its accompanying art museum, the Haus Der Muzik, an interactive music museum and it all capped off by a nice dinner out to celebrate Fiona's birthday.

The streets were extremely quiet on Sunday morning, which allowed us to walk at our own pace and admire the fabulous buildings and scenery. We were awfully impressed with the French embassy and its duelling gold mosaics. Right across the street was a monument to Soviet soldiers who liberated Vienna in WWII. With the fountain and spray it was quite impressive - glad it didn't get pulled down with the wall.

RIght behind the monument was the lower entrance to the Belvedere Palace, but we ignored it and hiked all the way around the outside wall to the upper entrance. The Belevedere Palace was where Prince Eugene of Savoy, the great general, hung his hat. He had pretty good taste, because the place looked spectacular both inside and out.

The art inside the Upper Belvedere was a mixed bag. It had advertised one of the best collection of Schiele, which had us somewhat excited because we had never heard of him before. He was disappointing, perhaps the reason why we hadn't heard his name before. The other major attraction was Gustav Klimt's 'The Kiss'. It was spectacular. The type of painting that you stand in front of and lose track of time. I was never a big fan of it in prints or the millions of other things its been imprinted on, but in person it was really good. We also saw a really nice Monet ('Chef Paul') and found out we really liked Waldmuller, mostly for the happy-go-lucky tone of his subjects compared to those of his contemporaries. Again no pictures, so we can't share our favourites, but we did sneak an illicit one out the back window overlooking the garden, which looked much better from on high than at ground level. They also served a pretty mean chocolate mousse torte in the garden.

We next walked to the Haus der Muzik. We got a little rained on the process, but as with everything in Vienna it wasn't very far so no harm done. The HdM was an eclectic mix of kids museum, science museum and historical music museum. The first floor had a room that was split in three - the first third had an exhibition on the history of the Vienna Philharmonic - old tickets, lists of conductors, typical museum stuff. Next to that was an interactive exhibit where two people could throw dice on a light board and generate their own waltz. Each number on the die corresponded to a bar of music. Each person rolled four times and the resulting melodies combined to make a waltz. It was quite fun, we composed two and danced to the counter to buy the sheet music. The last part of the room was blocked off and made to look like the inside of a theatre. Inside they played orchestra concerts on a big screen. When we were in they were showing last year's big outdoor concert at Schonbrunn. It looked like the type of event to put on the calendar. The second floor took and interactive scientific approach. The first room played sounds as you would hear them in the womb. Each of the other rooms had interactive screens that taught about umpteen different facets of sound and music. It was all very interesting. The next floor had several different rooms that concentrated on different ways to combine sounds into music. They had entire walls where you could stick your head into crevices to hear different sounds - from Times Square at night to interstellar static. At the end they had constructed a multitude of stations where you could create sounds by gestures, or punches or with your own voice. The last floor was split into five different rooms, each detailing the life, history and musical impact of 5 great composers. The true highlight, though, was an exhibit where you could pick up the conductor's baton in front of a big screen with a recording of the Vienna Philharmonic. You could choose your song and then had to keep time with the baton, the musicians on the screen playing slower or faster according to your movements. The people ahead of us were hopeless, being stopped halfway through their music with snide recorded comments from the band like "If you want us to play The Blue Danube, why do you conduct 'La Cucaracha'" and "I've been in the Vienna Philharmonic for 37 years and this is the first time I have cried while playing". We thought it was impossible. But the birthday girl rocked it. She conducted the orchestra like a natural, getting all the way through Eine Klein Nachtmuzik. Everyone waiting for their turn gave her a standing ovation. We had a really great time and would recommend it to anyone.

A short, sharp rainshower forced us into a most shameful lunch - damn you, McDonald's for being the only close and convenient place. We quickly regained our Austrian street cred, however, by stopping for torte, coffee and beer at a nearby cafe once the storm had cleared.

We gave ourselves plenty of time at the hotel to get ready for dinner. The concierge had booked us in at Do & Co, a swanky place on the 7th floor of a building overlooking the main cathedral. So we got all dolled up and took a taxi. The driver tried in his best English to convince me I should have worn a jacket, but we were sure we had already seen all the rain we were going to get. When we arrived at the restaurant we realised that it was going to be what we had hoped. The view was amazing. I sat with my back to the window, achieving the dual purpose of letting the birthday girl get the view and not aggravating my fear of heights. The food was great - my nice beef carpaccio starter was easily outshone by Fiona's tempura shrimp in chilli sauce, and our duelling Austrian mains, a Wiener Schnitzel the size of her head for Fiona and Franz Josef's favourite Tafelspitz for me, were both terrific and dessert went down so fast I'm not sure I even remember what it was. But the company was even better. The birthday girl looked absolutely radiant and I felt like the luckiest guy in the room. Except for maybe the small dog who came in with the couple beside us. He had quite the smile on when the waitress brought him some water. Yes. A dog in a high end restaurant. Nobody batted an eye.

We ended the night in the bar one floor down having a Drambuie and a Cosmopolitan - you can guess which belonged to whom. Sufficiently fortified we walked all the way back to the hotel, enjoying the cool night air. We resigned ourselves to only do a little blogging and card writing the next morning, to facilitate a nice lie-in ahead of our trip back. I think we left some things undone in Vienna, which leaves us good reason to come back. There was a lot we liked - the food, the architecture, the extremely friendly locals and all just two short 1.5 hour flights away.

This does mean that our next trip now won't be until August, when we finally return to Canada. We are really, really looking forward to it, so hopefully the work-filled days in between fly by and before we know it we're flying again.

Vienna - Day 3

After feeling some pressure to knock more and more of the multitude of Vienna's sights off the list, it felt strange to be approaching this day with only two items on the to-do list. I guess that had mostly to do with the magnitude of those sights - the Schonbrunn Palace and the Vienna Opera House.

First was Schloss Schonbrunn, another one of the Habsburg's Palaces. You know how it goes, when you get tired of knocking around the 1000+ rooms of the Hofburg, or you just can't stand anymore gold brocade you need another small 1000+ room palace to retreat to.

In order to keep some of our energy for walking the immense grounds we decided to take the subway. We got a quick tour of the Naschmarkt on the way there. The Naschmarkt is one of Vienna's outdoor markets, specialising in food, spices and produce. It was incredible how many different types of olives you can have shoved in your direction over a mere 200 meters. And they were stuffed with any and every substance known to man. The flea market set up at the end was similar. We had trouble thinking of items that we didn't see. It was this huge semi-organized jumble of people's old junk.

The subway was as efficient and easy as you expect it should be in Austria and we were soon at the Palace. We bought some tickets to tour the inside of the palace, but since it's usually quite busy you are assigned a specific start and end time during which you can tour. We had about an hour before our timeslot so we started touring the gardens. We began in the Crown Prince's garden which was a small side garden, nicely laid out in two sections - one sort of flower & hedge design and a second part that had a whole bunch of citrus trees around an ancient yew tree. The different types of limes, oranges and lemons were all gnarly and ancient looking.

We spent a little bit of time looking over the massive back gardens, all the way to the Neptune Fountain and the Gloriette at the top of the hill. It was truly mind-blowing and absolutely stunning.

Our tour of the house was fun and initiated a lot of comparisons to the Hofburg and Versailles. The styles were very similar, with lots of gold - probably too much gold. The most striking rooms were small antechambers built to hold Marie-Theresa's Chinese pottery collections. They were these small oval rooms with beautiful inlaid designs on the floor and dozens of small shelves holding the vases.

Post-tour we hit the Palace restaurant for some sausage and sauerkraut. The patio was populated with fat, sassy little sparrows that dove in and out between the tables. There was an old man a few seats down who was kindly sharing his cream torte with them. It was quite cute to see them hop up and take a few bites while the old man attacked the torte from the other side with knife and fork.

Suitably fuelled we spent some more time walking in the gardens, touring the tree-lined lanes to see statues and fountains. We really liked the faux Roman ruins, specially designed in the 1700's to look like authentic ruins, then left in disrepair for so long that they started to more and more resemble their inspiration.

After spending a suitable amount of time gawping at the Neptune Fountain and getting some nice shots of the gardens, we hiked up the hill to the Gloriette, a small building at the top which you could climb to get an even better view.

We left Schonbrunn tired but happy, having seen another one of Vienna's must-see attractions.

We went back to the hotel to pretty up for our night at the Opera House. We were quite excited. Even though we had seen Giselle before, it had been with a touring company and we were expecting a much higher level. Plus, the venue itself was a thing to behold. Although it was absolutely enormous on the outside and the seating ran up for 5 stories, it felt small and intimate, a perfect place for a good ballet. It felt grand to be part of the smartly dressed masses making our way into the theatre.

The ballet itself was superb. Although we were both impressed with the two leads, but even more impressed with the two secondary leads. The sets were magnificent and staging was great. The orchestra brought it all together. All-in-all a fabulous night, even if we had to run through the rain to catch a taxi back to the hotel. If you're ever in Vienna, find a reason to see something at the StatsOper.

Vienna - Day 2

After our lie-in we went downstairs to partake of the complimentary hotel breakfast. We've gotten used to disregarding hotel breakfasts due to their lack of originality and insanely high prices, but we went for this one as it was reputed to be one of the best in Vienna. Well done to the Hotel Kaiserhof! The breakfast was a nice mix of bread, pastries, fruit, cold cuts, cheese and warm items. We were well fortified for our day by the time we left.

Our first stop was Stephansdom, or St. Stephen's Cathedral, which sits on a large plaza from which several good shopping streets radiate. We thoroughly enjoyed our walk over because the architecture here is very impressive. Each building is unique and the mix of modern and older styles is very visually appealing. Each building, no matter its style, also has extra adornments like painted walls, window boxes, gargoyles or statues. As you walk down a main street you peek down the side streets and see all these unique buildings and usually some type of grand building or monument at the end. It's really quite cool.

St. Stephen's was under serious reconstruction, so we didn't get to see all of it, although the scaffolding was covered in tarps that showed what the restored wall underneath would look like. Fortunately we could still see the roof which is made up of patterned tiles and was quite pretty. Inside it was not too different from most of the the other major cathedrals we have visited, with one major exception - the addition of colour. They had covered the large windows with long strips of brilliantly coloured plastic which had the effect of throwing purples, greens and oranges all over the church. It was otherworldly and I quite liked it. We didn't have the guts to head up either of the two towers as although it wasn't as hot as in Florence, it was very humid.

We went down one of the major shopping streets towards the Hofburg. It was a really nice atmosphere. Touristy, but still authentic, with beautiful buildings and enough, but not too many, people. Fiona bought a pair of shoes at a Salamander shop.

The Hofburg was the Imperial Residence of the Habsburgs, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is a massive complex of buildings with what seems like a dozen or so museums and tourist attractions. Things we didn't go see - the Lippizaner Stallions and the horse riding school, the imperial treasury and the papyrus museum. After taking a few snapshots of the statues outside and the horses waiting for people to fill their carriages, we headed into the first attraction - a three-headed monster that consisted of the Silver Room, the Sisi Museum and the Royal Apartments.

The Silver Room was an assembly of all the Habsburg's silver and porcelain and it was about as interesting as room after room of gold plates and silver knives can be. Don't get me wrong, there were definitely more than a few items that were well worth gawping at, but we weren't stopping to read every description or listen to every anecdote about table settings on the audio guide. Some items we did like - a few very fine silver bottle hangers so that everyone could know what was in an opened bottle or jug, and the interesting nugget that some of the items in the museum are still used at Austrian state functions.

The next phase was the Sisi Museum, dedicated the Empress Elizabeth, known to everyone as Sisi and, apparently, for reasons we have yet to discover, beloved by all. She married Franz-Josef and was Empress for quite some time, but never really liked the gig. Most of her quotes were of the "woe is me, I have to put up with this terrible life of opulence" variety, which doesn't garner much sympathy in my book. Her husband sounded like a pretty decent guy, one of the first absolute monarchs to take on the role of a public servant. Apparently he worked 16 hours a day, taking audiences with the public and meeting with ministers. I'll need to find a book to do some more reading on both him and the rest of his Habsburg clan.

The last stop were the Royal Apartments which were similar in taste and style to those we saw in Versailles. By this time we were developing an appetite, so we breezed through a little quicker than we probably should have. I guess knowing that we were going to visit Schonbrunn Palace, the secondary palace of the Habsburgs, the next day meant we could afford to skip through some of the boring bits.

We did some wandering around the Hofburg, taking in the scenes and the statues - the one of Prince Eugene of Savoy was particularly impressive - before finding a nice cafe for lunch. The actual lunch was nothing special, but the dessert was a delicious torte. The hardest part was definitely choosing just one from the fine menu of several dozen.

Suitably refreshed we walked all the way around the massive complex (we hadn't planned it too well) to see the Great Hall in the library. I would definitely recommend this to anyone. The library is awe-inspiring, and not just for the thousands of extremely old volumes. The decor was suited to a six century imperial dynasty - which is to say that it was the exact opposite of understated. But it was still cool - there were secret rooms hidden behind book cases and grand spiral staircases to get to the higher shelves and the second floor. There was also an ongoing exhibit talking about all the cultures and nation-states that were part of the Empire. It was a miracle it all hung together as long as it did.

Our final stop for the day was the Kunst Historisch Museum, which is essentially an art history museum. It sits right next to the Natural History Museum, which is built as a mirror image to echo the whole art versus science debate. The guide book listed it as a must see, and it did not disappoint. The first exhibit is the building itself which is all marble and probably more opulent than it is good for one building to be. Even having visited the Louvre and the Uffizi, I felt like a country bumpkin, walking around with my mouth agape.

The museum itself is split into two sections, one of paintings and another of ancient statuary and Egyptian artifacts. We started with the paintings. The rooms were nicely separated by different schools of art and the collections were very impressive. We saw some very nice Raphaels, a room full of Caravaggios, another room full of Ruebens, and everyone's favorite portrait artist - Holbein. There was a special exhibit of Jan Fabre's work hanging throughout all the rooms, which we initially dismissed. But when we went in for a closer look and found out his large, blue curtains were actually silk covered in (wait for it ...) ball point pen that we found an ounce of respect for his madness.

We only had an hour left when we came to the Egyptian and Greek exhibit. The assembled sarcophagi were astonishing in their condition and extravagance. The rooms holding the old Greek and Roman statues were also magnificent, with beautiful bas-relief mouldings and ancient mosaic floors rescued from old villas.

We thoroughly enjoyed this museum and agree it is a must-see for any art lover visiting Vienna. We're deciding on exactly where it ranks in our world top 5, but it is definitely up their with the Louvre. Given the quality of the art, the layout and the lack of Louvre-sized crowds, I would say that right now it probably has the edge.

We left the museum and walked back through the very sunny streets of Vienna towards the hotel. At one point a large procession of cyclists passed by, all in varying states of undress and unruly-ness. It was a little weird. It being only 6pm we found a wine bar to pass an hour or so before settling down to a nice dinner at a Vietnamese noodle house. The schnitzel will have to wait for another day.