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.