Walking around Vienna

We did the most walking on our first full day in Vienna, Wednesday.  In the morning, as I mentioned, we walked up to the Hofburg Palace

to get tickets to watch the Lippizaners practice at a later date.  Some were being led across the street to the arena for that day's workout, so we stopped to watch them:

In the afternoon after a tea and pastry break in our hotel room, we crossed to the other side of the canal, though we never made it all the way to the Danube.  The area was residential/commercial for a while, then we reached the park we had come to see, and beyond that it was mostly industrial and not great for walking.  This is Greg in the park, the Augarten, built on the Danube flood plain in the 1600s as a hunting lodge.  The thing in the background is described in most brochures as an eyesore, but it was decided to leave it in place:  it is a flak tower put in during WWII for firing at Allied planes coming in to bomb Vienna.  There is a bunker there too, which we did not see, but which has been turned into a restaurant.

The park itself was beautiful and peaceful, especially on one of the nice spring days we have enjoyed since being here.  One end of the park houses the Vienna Choir Boys' school and dorms; we wandered through it because we had the temerity to go through an open gate, but we probably weren't supposed to.  It wasn't easy to get out of, as all the other gates were locked!  The hunting lodge part of the park was what we had come to see:  it was turned into a museum, and is the site of the Vienna Porcelain manufacturing.  Beautiful, ornate, intricate porcelain.  The process, which involves making the statuettes and the more elaborate tableware in pieces and then assembling them after the first firing, is incredibly detailed and complicated.  Everything was and still is made by hand there, and they now invite artists in for residencies.

We walked back to the hotel (we had covered some six miles, by this time, we think) and collapsed for a while before going out for dinner.  Since we had the concert tickets for 8:15 we had to eat fairly early.  We went to a sort of tavern, small and very crowded, and had good Austrian food:  fish for me, schnitzel for Greg.  Then we headed to the concert.  

Finding one's way around Vienna isn't easy.  Maps are easy to come by, but the streets inside the big ring streets are not orderly and also change names every few blocks, so it's almost impossible to memorize routes ahead of time until you become somewhat familiar with the city.  To get to the concert we decided to play it safe and take a main road up to one of the rings, then continue down the ring until we reached the hall.  Simple in theory, but we left from somewhere near the center of the ring, took a spoke which went a little to the left, then had to walk to the right much farther than planned, in the dark, not too sure what the cross streets were because they kept changing names as they crossed and I couldn't find them on the map which I couldn't read anyway because I didn't have my glasses on . . .   We did make it in time, but it was a little stressful.  Much shorter on the way back when we knew where we were going and were able to cut through town.

This is the hall where the concert took place:

Small performance room (behind Greg), and as I mentioned previously, a very enjoyable evening.

So close to 9 miles of walking on Wednesday.  Glad we had been training by the river at home!

Thursday we decided to use our open admission tickets to see the horses train. One slight problem:  I don't know whether it was the horses themselves or the sawdust in the arena, but Greg and I both had severe allergy problems.  We stuck it out anyway.  They brought in different horses to work every half hour, and it was fascinating to see what they could ask of the more experienced ones versus the younger ones.  Last time we saw them (thirty-five years ago) Greg didn't know anything about horses!  No pictures allowed in the arena. 

Jet lag was getting to us at that point, so we just wandered for a while, discovering some old sections of town with twisted alleyways, much more interesting than the broad shopping avenues.  We picked up another pastry each, and headed back to the hotel for tea.

We had considered going to another concert that night, but decided that we were too tired - we were both afraid we would fall asleep during the performance!  Instead we had a very night dinner at a quiet restaurant right around the corner from the hotel, again in the university area.  The restaurant had set up tables in the small triangular plaza in front (which still required the waiters to cross a not-too-busy street) so we enjoyed another nice evening outdoors.  Greg had goulash, not hot, but strong on the paprika nonetheless; I don't remember at all what I had, but I do remember that it was good!  When we walk around like that, we tend to skip lunch, so dinners are that much more welcome.

Time to move to a new post.

Some pictures - part 1

Leaving Richland.

The hipster, who put us up uncomplainingly in his cute little house:

Thank you!

And a great view from the Seatac Crown Room:

The Danube Canal in front of our hotel.  A lot of tour boats leave from here and head on out the Danube itself.  That is how Greg got to Bratislava for a meeting last year.

We wanted tea.  Of course we wanted tea!  There was nothing to use to heat water in the room, but it turned out that the desk had electric kettles available on request, and they brought one up to our room.  Great, but they didn't bring tea cups, and we didn't feel like asking for them, so we improvised.  Yes, this really is tea.

READ THIS THROUGH CAREFULLY.  It cracked us up.

This was the pedestrian walkway through the shopping area of Vienna; not particularly enticing, with standard designer and not-so-designer stores, and with very high prices.  The tower on the right is part of St. Stephen Cathedral.

The balcony of the hotel overlooking the canal (not as picturesque as it sounds, there was a road in between), and yes, another glass of tea.

The view from our balcony.  Great for people-watching! 

The restaurant where we had dinner our first night in Vienna.

More pictures to follow in a separate post.

Quiet - April 5

I am way behind in updating this, obviously, since we have now been in Austria for close to a week.  I am sitting in our room in Pernegg, windows wide open, watching the mountains through a steady rain, no wind, occasional thunder.  The whole area is bucolic and wonderfully quiet.  The birds are still singing, even through the rain. 

We reached Vienna on Tuesday afternoon, tired from the long plane ride from Seattle to Paris, followed by a four-hour layover in Paris (no real way to tell that we were in France!) and a second, one-and-a half hour flight to Vienna.  From there we took the train into town, and walked 3/4 of a mile to the hotel.  Greg had stayed at this hotel before.  It is right along the Danube Canal, an older hotel but very comfortable and well situated for heading out into town.  We headed to the university area not far behind the hotel for a short walk and dinner at a seafood restaurant.  Greg feasted on a huge vat of mussels, and was happy as a clam.  (Sorry.)  We headed back to the hotel early and slept soundly.

On the Continent, they do justice to the term "continental breakfast".  The hotel had a buffet with scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, Vienna sausages (go figure), pastries, baskets of breads of all sorts, cheeses, ham, salami and other sausages, jellies, fruit, sliced vegetables, and several huge vats of yoghurt.  And tea.  Good tea, with an actual tea menu.  Great way to start the day, and it definitely made one to sit and linger and get a good start to the day.

We started out walking aimlessly on Wednesday, planning only to scout things out and pick up tickets too the morning training session later in the week at the Spanish Riding School (the Lipizzans).  We were accosted in front of St. Stephen Cathedral by people in period dress (what period wasn't entirely clear, probably Mozart-ish) selling tickets for a sort of showcase concert with music by Mozart and Johann Strauss, including operatic excerpts and some ballet.   We decided to try it and got tickets for Wednesday night.  Apparently there are several similar performances held on a regular basis, enhanced by being in small palace salons; the performing groups are typically small, with 10 musicians or less.  We had a great conversation (mixed English and German) with the man we bought the tickets from, from Kosovo, who plays the bass in the ensemble we got tickets to hear.  Actually, at that point, I was very skeptical - why would the musicians be out on the street selling tickets, for one thing?  And then he iinsisted that he would come say hello to us at the performance . . .  Anyway, we got the tickets.  The concert turned out to be quite pleasant, in a small room holding perhaps 100 people with great acoustics.  The performance itself was good, even if all popular, well-known works (I am not really wilid about Johann Strauss, but it made sense in context), though I felt sorry for the two dancers having to perform on a tiny stage.  And no, the ticket seller wasn't in the orchestra, and did not descend into the audience to greet us, as promised.  Except that he did - he was waiting for us in the lobby at intermission, having apparently made a special trip in to say hello - and he wasn't playing because he had the night off!  I was definitely surprised.  

We had spent the rest of the day wandering around; we did get our tickets to see the horses, found a few interesting small alleys, cruised down the main shopping street.  Vienna is much quieter than Paris, perhaps because a good part of downtown is limited to pedestrians, but also because Austrian drivers do not lean on their horns the way the French do.  We did hear quite a few emergency vehicles going by the hotel, but overall the city is distinctly smaller and quieter.  I still don't particularly find any charm to Vienna, although our time there was pleasant enough.  

Happy April Fool's Day!

We're relaxing in the Crown Room in Paris while waiting for our flight to Vienna. Ten hours in one seat is a loooong time, but the shower we got to take when we got here definitely helped.  I slept a lot and feel pretty well, but with no sleep at all, Greg is a monster in the making.  I'll add more when we get in this afternoon!