European Trip Day 22 Vienna

Vienna

It was a very early start to our day in Vienna. There were four coachloads from our boat going in for a tour of the city, followed by a 90 minute guided walking tour and then some free hours in Vienna to do as we chose.

We only went into the old area of Vienna. The Danube has been re-directed out of the old town due to flooding, so it was a fair distance just to get into town. The bus wound round many streeets with our guide pointing out many places of interest. There are so many and so close together that it felt like being at a tennis match. Look right, look left, now on your right….

Susan and Barb had been intending to catch a bus to see the Belvedere Museum and Klimpt exhibition, but Susan was feeling overwhelmed after the bus tour and decided to just go back to the boat instead. So we joined the walking tour. Our tour guide today had a sense of humour at least and made the tour interesting and amusing. We saw the Hapsburg Winter Palace and beautiful rose gardens.

Then we saw various museums and libraries and opera houses. We liked the idea of all the Ball rooms. Apparently there are a LOT of balls and concerts in Vienna. Everyone learns to do the Viennese Waltz at school and there are dance schools around to teach both dancing and etiquette. The women wear long white dresses and the men formal black tie suits for these occasions. It must look wonderful!

We saw where the Spanish Riding school stables were. The back side of the white horses were visible, but their heads were down busy eating breakfast. We also saw the arena where they perform. The horses are especially bred and trained for this. When the foals are born they are black or brown but lose this colour over the next six years and gradually turn white!

Our guide gave us a very good historical account of Austria’s history. Kings and Queens, wars etc. I’m starting to get quite confused by it all! When she showed us the memorial to the Plague she pointed out that the Hapsburg King had a very large chin due to years of inter-breeding with their own cousins. This doesn’t happen now (or for the last 200 years) so the chins are back to normal size.

We were left by our guide outside the rather magnificent St Stephens Cathedral, with instructions of where to go to meet the coaches to take us back to the ship. We were feeling thirsty, so sat down in a busy cafe in the square surrounding the Cathedral. Big mistake. We couldn’t even attract a waiters’ attention as they scurried round serving other people who’d arrived after us. After ten minutes we got up and left and found a quieter side street.

Barb was keen to try the Sachertorte which is famous in Vienna. It is a layered chocolate cake with apricot jam in between the layers and chocolate icing on top served with whipped cream. It was lovely, but you could only have a sliver as it was very rich.

We walked around the streets which were busy with shoppers on a Monday and eventually went into a bar for a drink (and to find clean loos). There are very few puplic seating spaces in the city. I guess they want people to pay money in the cafes. We were surprised to find that many people including the barmaid were smoking inside the bar. It’s been years since we’ve seen this.

Then we made our way to the coach meeting area where there were some seats outdoors in the shade. Barb tried an ice-cream and John tried a german sausage from the many street vendors.

The highlight of the day was the string quartet performance aboard our boat this evening.

Luckily we came back to the boat in the early afternoon and had time for a siesta as the performance went quite late.Afterwards we sat up on the top deck to watch the boat sail out of Vienna. It was rather romantic with the lights of the city and the various bridges our only lights. We had to remain seated as the clearance of the boat beneath some of the low bridges was quite tight.