On the beautiful blue Danube
Or, holiday in Vienna.
I've never been a consistent blogger in even the loosest sense of the word, but I *have* blogged about every 'big' holiday I've taken. I might as well continue, if only to let people know that yes, I'm still here...
We left on Sunday. My parents drove us to Dusseldorf Airport. This time, I'd thought to bring our tickets. The new experience on this trip was the automatic/online checking in. Instead of going to the desk to get our boarding passes, we checked in on a terminal placed there for that purpose. We figured it out with a little trial and error, but it took us long enough that my parents came to check over my shoulder to see if I could manage.
I think this was the first time ever we got through the security check without any incident whatsoever. Previous times, boyfriend had some issues with a belt setting off the metal detector, or the x-ray picking up on his electric toothbrush and arousing suspicion so we had to unpack the bag, but this time we'd thought of everything and no problem.
Of course, that's no guarantee for the rest of the journey. Our flight turned out to have been delayed. Oh well, we had some quite decent if fairly expensive lunch in one of the airport cafes before it was finally time to board.
The flight itself was uneventful. The plane was actually quite small, only four seats next to each other, two on either side of the aisle. We'd booked quite late, that's probably why the two of us didn't have seats next to each other. So I spent the whole flight reading and looking out the window, because the person sitting next to me wasn't inclined to talk either.
When we arrived at Vienna Airport, it turned out that they'd been remodeling, and therefore we arrived in a part of the airport that would normally be the departures area. I must say, It's a lot nicer to arrive somewhere like that than it is in a normal arrivals area. Normally all the arrivals area is for is for you to get your baggage and get out of there. The shops looked very welcoming in comparison to that.
Once we'd found our way to the hotel it was almost dinnertime, so we went back out to find a restaurant.
We found a touristy place on a square near the Stefansdom (Graben? possibly), which had a heated terrace, very simple, attractive and tasty food but with portions that could have been a little larger.
For desert I tried Wiener Eiskaffee (Viennese Iced Coffee), wich is cold coffee with a scoop of vanilla icecream in it, topped with unsweetened whipped cream. We got some extra sugar with it, and it needed it, just to be drinkable. Great idea for a desert, this, but it had too much coffee/was still too bitter for my taste, really.
After dinner, it was still early, so we decided to take a walk, wherever our feet would take us. Starting with a walk to the Michaelsplatz, where we'd have to pick up tickets for the Spanish Riding School on Tuesday.
From the Michaelsplatz we walked through the passage to the other side of the Hofburg and past the National Library to the Maria Theresia Platz. Then we turned back in what I thought was vaguely the direction of our hotel, and saw that we could walk through a park on the other side of the National Libray building. So we took the route through the park, and ended up on the back side of the Albertina museum.
Going past that, we came to a little square. A sign there pointed to the Stefansdom, but I took a street that (i thought) ran parallel to that, becaus we'd already seen the Stefansdom and I wanted to see other parts.
So, randomly wandering in what I thought was vaguely the direction of our hotel, we came across hotel Sacher (famous for the Wiener Sachertorte) and the Haus der Musik, which we also planned to visit at some point.
Then, boyfriend asked whether it's not time to go back to the hotel and I responded that we were already going in that direction, but just to be sure, I pulled out the map.
Good thing I did, too. Because we were nowhere close to our hotel! In fact, we were just about on the opposite side of (the center of) Vienna. Oops. Thankfully, central Vienna is relatively small, and the walk to the hotel was still quite manageable.
The hotel was pretty decent, actually. Hotel Stefanie is just about on the northern edge of the city centre. It's quite close to a subway station, but also still within walking distance of the Stefansdom. And, as we proved on that first night, really within walking distance of a large portion of the sights in Vienna. The room was a bit on the small side, but it had all the necessary amenities.
The helpful staff was actually quite refreshing. I haven't really been in a hotel where the staff was actively unhelpful, but this was different. The hotel still uses old-fashioned keys, and just that fact necessitates a little more contact with staff, but they were always there with a smile and a friendly greeting, as well as answers to any touristy questions.
Breakfast was also relaxed. It was a huge buffet of lovely food, some of the 'English' basics -- no baked beans or sausages, though, but also lots of different kinds of bread and cereal. The breakfast room was beautifully furnished and quite large, and there was also an outside terrace if the weather allowed it (it did). You could just walk into the room and sit down and one of the servers would be along to ask whether we wanted coffee or not. And that was the only thing they asked. No fussing around with room numbers or anything.
After breakfast we took the U-bahn(subway) to Schloss Schönbrunn. The station was quite close to the hotel, even.
Schönbrunn is huge. The palace itself is only partially open to the public, either with a guided tour or an audio guide. We took the guided tour, and that took us about an hour. The tour was definitely worth taking. What it emphasised, for me at least, was how (relatively) recent all of these things were. Vienna was the capital of an Empire, however small, into the first decades of the previous century. The last of the ruling family only died a year ago. So much history, so close.
The grounds have enough other attractions to spend an entire day, even just walking around the gardens and climbing up to the pavillion at the top of the hill, or some of the side presentations or museums. About the only thing that slightly spoiled the day there were the occasional rainy squalls. The day started out nice and sunny, but in the afternoon it was raining on and off. We were usually within range of shelter, but it was still slightly annoying.
We could even have spent the evening at Schönbrunn, because there are dinners and concerts there of an evening, if you're willing to spend the cash, but we'd already booked something in Vienna itself, so that's where we went when the rain cleared long enough.
We'd booked tickets for a 'Mozart Concert', a series of concerts of Mozart compositions, which switched between four different venues throughout the season. On the day we went, it was in the StaatsOper (Vienna State Opera House).
When we got there, it turned out that we'd walked past it already. Hotel Sacher is just opposite. You'd think the Vienna State Opera house would be tough to miss, but we'd managed it.
On the outside, the building is mainly just big. A lot of carving on the side of the building, but to be honest that's almost to be expected in Vienna. The inside, however, very, very pretty. Vaulted ceilings decorated with bright colours and lots of marble. The staff wore period costumes. Well, costumes from some period, at least. Fancy dresses, in the case of some of the women. All the men had basically the same costume just with different coloured coats, but I doubt some of the women's various dresses were period appropriate. Some of them were gorgeous, though.
The concert hall itself is so much the prototype for opera halls in movies/comics it almost looks cliche, but it's lavishly decorated nonetheless. And the acoustics were awesome. The hall was packed, but the smallish orchestra and two singers could perform without any amplification. Everything was clearly audible. It also never got too loud at the points where the entire orchestra was playing.
The director of the orchestra knew how to manipulate his audience, bringing on the drama during the pieces that were rythmic/cheerful enough to allow the audience to clap along. The male singer also did a very good job, but the female singer was slightly out of her depth with the Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute. Not the easiest aria to sing by any account, but still a bit of a shame, especially since everything else was played/sung so well.
I'm still a bit peeved that for the big instrumentals solo work, they chose to perform a violin concerto. Mozart has written concertos for lots of instruments -- flute, oboe, horn, clarinet, piano... Why the violin again? So much of Mozart's work, especially the works performed that evening, are very string-focused, so why not give a different instrument pride of place for one piece? It didn't detract from the excellent performance itself, though.
They played three encores -- the final two being "Blue Danube" and the "Radetzky March". Never mind that the whole evening was in honour of Mozart, Strauss got his look in. Apparently you're not allowed to end a performance (for tourists) without having played those! ;-)
On the subject of Mozart and other composers, that was actually slightly odd. I mean, Vienna has been a cultural capital for centuries. Never mind just Mozart and the Strauss family, but Schumann and Schubert, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mahler, Beethoven... That's quite the prestigious list. Yet all you see around the place is Mozart, Mozart, Mozart, Strauss and more Mozart. It suits me fine - Mozart's my favourite composer - but surely other people have different tastes?
The day after the Mozart Concert, we had booked a show of the Spanish Riding School. At least, that's what we thought. As it turned out, the horses and riders of the School were on summer break. Instead, they had a show with young stallions and recently born foals with their mothers. Interesting, and these horses are beautiful even this young, but not really what we'd wanted to see. Oh well. It's a beautiful building, though.
We spent the rest of the day going through the museum of Art History and the Albertina Museum, which is more modern art. To be honest, I didn't look all that hard at the art in the Art History museum -- I was too busy looking at the building, which was, in true Viennese Style, beautifully decorated with baroque ceilings, carvings and coloured marbles. The museum cafe served surprisingly good food, too.
The conclusion boyfriend and I arrived at after going through the Albertina Museum is that we do not have the same taste in modern art. That's going to be interesting, because we're still trying to decorate our house, and I want a painting or poster or *something* to hang on one entirely blank wall...
It was getting late, but we passed a sign saying that the House of Music would be open until very late and we'd been planning to visit, so we went there next. It was... not entirely what I had expected it to be. One floor was dedicated to the history of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and while the room that continually played the most recent New Year's Concert was nice, it's not all that relevant to music in general. More fun was the 'random waltz' generator, that used a number of precomposed snippets. You needed to throw two dice, and the numbers on the die determined which snippet would be used for that measure. After throwing eight times, you had your very own waltz.
Another fun thing there was a setup that let you pretend to direct an orchestra (the Vienna Philharmonic, but it's the idea I liked, not the orchestra). It used a Wii-mote like baton and depending on how fast you swung the baton, the musicians would play faster or slower. You could really mess up the music like that. And if you stopped swinging entirely halfway through, one of the musicians would get up and scold you! That was funny to watch, although standing there it was more than a little frustrating.
By this time we were so indoctrinated about the Vienna Philharmonic and the New Year's Concert that we thought we'd take a look at the concert hall, located at the building owned by the Music Society of Vienna. We took a guided tour with a guide that knew his audience and spent most of his time on the 'Golden Hall'. Which isn't gold at all. While taking the tour of Schönbrunn, we were told that 'everything that glitters here is gold' -- all gold-decoration in Schönbrunn is actual gold or gold-leaf decoration. In the Musikverein, the guide told us that everything that looks like gold is polished brass or gold paint. The Golden Hall is also famed for its acoustics, but it actually needs to be full. It can hold about 2000 people, and it needs that many for its good acoustics. With just the 20 or so from the tour, it sounded like a bathroom, despite all efforts with wood and hollow spaces. Apparently, the storage space beneath the concert hall which has the same floor area of the hall helps a great deal with the acoustics during concerts.
Another nice litte fact the guide pointed out was the busts decorating the hall... Mozart and Strauss are in there, as well as Beethoven, Haydn and others. Mozart is even in there twice. But there are also two busts there that no-one can recognise anymore.
To be honest, looking at the Golden Hall on TV, I always thought it to be a bit too ostentatious. I haven't changed my mind after seeing the real thing. But learning the history was nice.
After the Musikverein, we had lunch in a cafe in the park behind the National Library. That cafe had a truly scary menu. The menu consisted of one page of dishes, one page of non-alcoholic drinks, beers and whiskeys, and four pages of wines, with prices ranging up to €390,- for a bottle. Despite the limited selection, the food was great, but I felt a little guilty ordering my customary Coke...
From there, we visited the Imperial Armoury, where the crown jewels and crowning regalia of the Habsburgs are on display, as well as a lot of other shiny, shiny things. There wasn't a tour though, and I like tours in places like this to explain the significance of the items. There were descriptions, but it's not the same. Also, way too many embroidered tabards.
We had actually planned to visit the Natural History Museum on Tuesday, just before visiting the Art History Museum, but at that time it was closed. I'm glad we came back, though. Again, just like the Art History Museum, the building was lavishly decorated, with the central stairway taking pride of place this time. Around it were six statues, among which were Da Vinci, Gallei and Newton. Unfortunately I couldn't place the others, but one of them was dressed in a toga or chiton, so may have been Democritus.
In the display halls, just below the ceilings, were paintings from when the building was constructed, covering the subjects of the exhibitions. The ceilings also had decorations themed to the exhibitions. Utterly gorgeous. Compared to that, the exhibitions themselves were almost underwhelming. :-)
Except for one bit. I remember being disappointed when I visited the Museum of Natural History in London the last time I was there, because they had changed the way the exhibited their minerals. Well, here in the Vienna Natural History Museum, they still had the old-fashioned display cases out, with all sorts of minerals and crystals in view, sorted by chemical composition. Glorious. Too bad boyfriend wasn't that impressed. On the other hand, we had been on our feet for quite a while by this time.
We paused for an ice-cream in the museum cafe. Again, surprisingly delicious. And also, we still hadn't come across any kind of self-service. Not in these museum restaurants, not anywhere else. Not even a counter where you ordered what you wanted and they prepared it for you... No, everywhere, you could just sit down, and a server would come and get you whatever you ordered. I'm not used to that in museum cafes, at the very least.
After dinner, it was time to find our way to the train station and head to the airport. But before we could head for the airport, we first had to find our way to the right platform. Because just like the airport, the station was remodeling. So really from the moment we walked to the station, when we weren't travelling, we were trying to figure out where to go next. Both station and airport were complete mazes. Probably because of the remodeling, the 'tax-free' (it's not tax-free if you're from the EU travelling to or from another EU country) shopping was before the security check, leaving us uncertain whether we'd be able to buy some liquor as a thank-you for my dad. We ended up playing it safe and not buying anything, but I still believe that as long as we'd kept it in the tax-free bag, it would have been all right.
The flight itself was okay. I ended up next to a friendly German couple, and we chatted a little throughout. We took off very late in the evening, so all lights were on in Vienna, and during take-off looking out the window was like looking at a lake full of jewels. Gorgeous. And Dusseldorf looked just like that when we arrived.
There was a little bit of tension as we arrived and found that my parents weren't waiting for us, but as it turned out, we'd walked out through a different gate than the one they'd announced for our plane. My parents were at the other gate and we headed home.
And that was my holiday in Vienna. I have the feeling that we still missed lots, but that will be for another time.
XWA
This entry was crossposted from DreamWidth. The DreamWidth entry has
comments. You can comment on whichever entry you prefer.
I've never been a consistent blogger in even the loosest sense of the word, but I *have* blogged about every 'big' holiday I've taken. I might as well continue, if only to let people know that yes, I'm still here...
We left on Sunday. My parents drove us to Dusseldorf Airport. This time, I'd thought to bring our tickets. The new experience on this trip was the automatic/online checking in. Instead of going to the desk to get our boarding passes, we checked in on a terminal placed there for that purpose. We figured it out with a little trial and error, but it took us long enough that my parents came to check over my shoulder to see if I could manage.
I think this was the first time ever we got through the security check without any incident whatsoever. Previous times, boyfriend had some issues with a belt setting off the metal detector, or the x-ray picking up on his electric toothbrush and arousing suspicion so we had to unpack the bag, but this time we'd thought of everything and no problem.
Of course, that's no guarantee for the rest of the journey. Our flight turned out to have been delayed. Oh well, we had some quite decent if fairly expensive lunch in one of the airport cafes before it was finally time to board.
The flight itself was uneventful. The plane was actually quite small, only four seats next to each other, two on either side of the aisle. We'd booked quite late, that's probably why the two of us didn't have seats next to each other. So I spent the whole flight reading and looking out the window, because the person sitting next to me wasn't inclined to talk either.
When we arrived at Vienna Airport, it turned out that they'd been remodeling, and therefore we arrived in a part of the airport that would normally be the departures area. I must say, It's a lot nicer to arrive somewhere like that than it is in a normal arrivals area. Normally all the arrivals area is for is for you to get your baggage and get out of there. The shops looked very welcoming in comparison to that.
Once we'd found our way to the hotel it was almost dinnertime, so we went back out to find a restaurant.
We found a touristy place on a square near the Stefansdom (Graben? possibly), which had a heated terrace, very simple, attractive and tasty food but with portions that could have been a little larger.
For desert I tried Wiener Eiskaffee (Viennese Iced Coffee), wich is cold coffee with a scoop of vanilla icecream in it, topped with unsweetened whipped cream. We got some extra sugar with it, and it needed it, just to be drinkable. Great idea for a desert, this, but it had too much coffee/was still too bitter for my taste, really.
After dinner, it was still early, so we decided to take a walk, wherever our feet would take us. Starting with a walk to the Michaelsplatz, where we'd have to pick up tickets for the Spanish Riding School on Tuesday.
From the Michaelsplatz we walked through the passage to the other side of the Hofburg and past the National Library to the Maria Theresia Platz. Then we turned back in what I thought was vaguely the direction of our hotel, and saw that we could walk through a park on the other side of the National Libray building. So we took the route through the park, and ended up on the back side of the Albertina museum.
Going past that, we came to a little square. A sign there pointed to the Stefansdom, but I took a street that (i thought) ran parallel to that, becaus we'd already seen the Stefansdom and I wanted to see other parts.
So, randomly wandering in what I thought was vaguely the direction of our hotel, we came across hotel Sacher (famous for the Wiener Sachertorte) and the Haus der Musik, which we also planned to visit at some point.
Then, boyfriend asked whether it's not time to go back to the hotel and I responded that we were already going in that direction, but just to be sure, I pulled out the map.
Good thing I did, too. Because we were nowhere close to our hotel! In fact, we were just about on the opposite side of (the center of) Vienna. Oops. Thankfully, central Vienna is relatively small, and the walk to the hotel was still quite manageable.
The hotel was pretty decent, actually. Hotel Stefanie is just about on the northern edge of the city centre. It's quite close to a subway station, but also still within walking distance of the Stefansdom. And, as we proved on that first night, really within walking distance of a large portion of the sights in Vienna. The room was a bit on the small side, but it had all the necessary amenities.
The helpful staff was actually quite refreshing. I haven't really been in a hotel where the staff was actively unhelpful, but this was different. The hotel still uses old-fashioned keys, and just that fact necessitates a little more contact with staff, but they were always there with a smile and a friendly greeting, as well as answers to any touristy questions.
Breakfast was also relaxed. It was a huge buffet of lovely food, some of the 'English' basics -- no baked beans or sausages, though, but also lots of different kinds of bread and cereal. The breakfast room was beautifully furnished and quite large, and there was also an outside terrace if the weather allowed it (it did). You could just walk into the room and sit down and one of the servers would be along to ask whether we wanted coffee or not. And that was the only thing they asked. No fussing around with room numbers or anything.
After breakfast we took the U-bahn(subway) to Schloss Schönbrunn. The station was quite close to the hotel, even.
Schönbrunn is huge. The palace itself is only partially open to the public, either with a guided tour or an audio guide. We took the guided tour, and that took us about an hour. The tour was definitely worth taking. What it emphasised, for me at least, was how (relatively) recent all of these things were. Vienna was the capital of an Empire, however small, into the first decades of the previous century. The last of the ruling family only died a year ago. So much history, so close.
The grounds have enough other attractions to spend an entire day, even just walking around the gardens and climbing up to the pavillion at the top of the hill, or some of the side presentations or museums. About the only thing that slightly spoiled the day there were the occasional rainy squalls. The day started out nice and sunny, but in the afternoon it was raining on and off. We were usually within range of shelter, but it was still slightly annoying.
We could even have spent the evening at Schönbrunn, because there are dinners and concerts there of an evening, if you're willing to spend the cash, but we'd already booked something in Vienna itself, so that's where we went when the rain cleared long enough.
We'd booked tickets for a 'Mozart Concert', a series of concerts of Mozart compositions, which switched between four different venues throughout the season. On the day we went, it was in the StaatsOper (Vienna State Opera House).
When we got there, it turned out that we'd walked past it already. Hotel Sacher is just opposite. You'd think the Vienna State Opera house would be tough to miss, but we'd managed it.
On the outside, the building is mainly just big. A lot of carving on the side of the building, but to be honest that's almost to be expected in Vienna. The inside, however, very, very pretty. Vaulted ceilings decorated with bright colours and lots of marble. The staff wore period costumes. Well, costumes from some period, at least. Fancy dresses, in the case of some of the women. All the men had basically the same costume just with different coloured coats, but I doubt some of the women's various dresses were period appropriate. Some of them were gorgeous, though.
The concert hall itself is so much the prototype for opera halls in movies/comics it almost looks cliche, but it's lavishly decorated nonetheless. And the acoustics were awesome. The hall was packed, but the smallish orchestra and two singers could perform without any amplification. Everything was clearly audible. It also never got too loud at the points where the entire orchestra was playing.
The director of the orchestra knew how to manipulate his audience, bringing on the drama during the pieces that were rythmic/cheerful enough to allow the audience to clap along. The male singer also did a very good job, but the female singer was slightly out of her depth with the Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute. Not the easiest aria to sing by any account, but still a bit of a shame, especially since everything else was played/sung so well.
I'm still a bit peeved that for the big instrumentals solo work, they chose to perform a violin concerto. Mozart has written concertos for lots of instruments -- flute, oboe, horn, clarinet, piano... Why the violin again? So much of Mozart's work, especially the works performed that evening, are very string-focused, so why not give a different instrument pride of place for one piece? It didn't detract from the excellent performance itself, though.
They played three encores -- the final two being "Blue Danube" and the "Radetzky March". Never mind that the whole evening was in honour of Mozart, Strauss got his look in. Apparently you're not allowed to end a performance (for tourists) without having played those! ;-)
On the subject of Mozart and other composers, that was actually slightly odd. I mean, Vienna has been a cultural capital for centuries. Never mind just Mozart and the Strauss family, but Schumann and Schubert, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mahler, Beethoven... That's quite the prestigious list. Yet all you see around the place is Mozart, Mozart, Mozart, Strauss and more Mozart. It suits me fine - Mozart's my favourite composer - but surely other people have different tastes?
The day after the Mozart Concert, we had booked a show of the Spanish Riding School. At least, that's what we thought. As it turned out, the horses and riders of the School were on summer break. Instead, they had a show with young stallions and recently born foals with their mothers. Interesting, and these horses are beautiful even this young, but not really what we'd wanted to see. Oh well. It's a beautiful building, though.
We spent the rest of the day going through the museum of Art History and the Albertina Museum, which is more modern art. To be honest, I didn't look all that hard at the art in the Art History museum -- I was too busy looking at the building, which was, in true Viennese Style, beautifully decorated with baroque ceilings, carvings and coloured marbles. The museum cafe served surprisingly good food, too.
The conclusion boyfriend and I arrived at after going through the Albertina Museum is that we do not have the same taste in modern art. That's going to be interesting, because we're still trying to decorate our house, and I want a painting or poster or *something* to hang on one entirely blank wall...
It was getting late, but we passed a sign saying that the House of Music would be open until very late and we'd been planning to visit, so we went there next. It was... not entirely what I had expected it to be. One floor was dedicated to the history of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and while the room that continually played the most recent New Year's Concert was nice, it's not all that relevant to music in general. More fun was the 'random waltz' generator, that used a number of precomposed snippets. You needed to throw two dice, and the numbers on the die determined which snippet would be used for that measure. After throwing eight times, you had your very own waltz.
Another fun thing there was a setup that let you pretend to direct an orchestra (the Vienna Philharmonic, but it's the idea I liked, not the orchestra). It used a Wii-mote like baton and depending on how fast you swung the baton, the musicians would play faster or slower. You could really mess up the music like that. And if you stopped swinging entirely halfway through, one of the musicians would get up and scold you! That was funny to watch, although standing there it was more than a little frustrating.
By this time we were so indoctrinated about the Vienna Philharmonic and the New Year's Concert that we thought we'd take a look at the concert hall, located at the building owned by the Music Society of Vienna. We took a guided tour with a guide that knew his audience and spent most of his time on the 'Golden Hall'. Which isn't gold at all. While taking the tour of Schönbrunn, we were told that 'everything that glitters here is gold' -- all gold-decoration in Schönbrunn is actual gold or gold-leaf decoration. In the Musikverein, the guide told us that everything that looks like gold is polished brass or gold paint. The Golden Hall is also famed for its acoustics, but it actually needs to be full. It can hold about 2000 people, and it needs that many for its good acoustics. With just the 20 or so from the tour, it sounded like a bathroom, despite all efforts with wood and hollow spaces. Apparently, the storage space beneath the concert hall which has the same floor area of the hall helps a great deal with the acoustics during concerts.
Another nice litte fact the guide pointed out was the busts decorating the hall... Mozart and Strauss are in there, as well as Beethoven, Haydn and others. Mozart is even in there twice. But there are also two busts there that no-one can recognise anymore.
To be honest, looking at the Golden Hall on TV, I always thought it to be a bit too ostentatious. I haven't changed my mind after seeing the real thing. But learning the history was nice.
After the Musikverein, we had lunch in a cafe in the park behind the National Library. That cafe had a truly scary menu. The menu consisted of one page of dishes, one page of non-alcoholic drinks, beers and whiskeys, and four pages of wines, with prices ranging up to €390,- for a bottle. Despite the limited selection, the food was great, but I felt a little guilty ordering my customary Coke...
From there, we visited the Imperial Armoury, where the crown jewels and crowning regalia of the Habsburgs are on display, as well as a lot of other shiny, shiny things. There wasn't a tour though, and I like tours in places like this to explain the significance of the items. There were descriptions, but it's not the same. Also, way too many embroidered tabards.
We had actually planned to visit the Natural History Museum on Tuesday, just before visiting the Art History Museum, but at that time it was closed. I'm glad we came back, though. Again, just like the Art History Museum, the building was lavishly decorated, with the central stairway taking pride of place this time. Around it were six statues, among which were Da Vinci, Gallei and Newton. Unfortunately I couldn't place the others, but one of them was dressed in a toga or chiton, so may have been Democritus.
In the display halls, just below the ceilings, were paintings from when the building was constructed, covering the subjects of the exhibitions. The ceilings also had decorations themed to the exhibitions. Utterly gorgeous. Compared to that, the exhibitions themselves were almost underwhelming. :-)
Except for one bit. I remember being disappointed when I visited the Museum of Natural History in London the last time I was there, because they had changed the way the exhibited their minerals. Well, here in the Vienna Natural History Museum, they still had the old-fashioned display cases out, with all sorts of minerals and crystals in view, sorted by chemical composition. Glorious. Too bad boyfriend wasn't that impressed. On the other hand, we had been on our feet for quite a while by this time.
We paused for an ice-cream in the museum cafe. Again, surprisingly delicious. And also, we still hadn't come across any kind of self-service. Not in these museum restaurants, not anywhere else. Not even a counter where you ordered what you wanted and they prepared it for you... No, everywhere, you could just sit down, and a server would come and get you whatever you ordered. I'm not used to that in museum cafes, at the very least.
After dinner, it was time to find our way to the train station and head to the airport. But before we could head for the airport, we first had to find our way to the right platform. Because just like the airport, the station was remodeling. So really from the moment we walked to the station, when we weren't travelling, we were trying to figure out where to go next. Both station and airport were complete mazes. Probably because of the remodeling, the 'tax-free' (it's not tax-free if you're from the EU travelling to or from another EU country) shopping was before the security check, leaving us uncertain whether we'd be able to buy some liquor as a thank-you for my dad. We ended up playing it safe and not buying anything, but I still believe that as long as we'd kept it in the tax-free bag, it would have been all right.
The flight itself was okay. I ended up next to a friendly German couple, and we chatted a little throughout. We took off very late in the evening, so all lights were on in Vienna, and during take-off looking out the window was like looking at a lake full of jewels. Gorgeous. And Dusseldorf looked just like that when we arrived.
There was a little bit of tension as we arrived and found that my parents weren't waiting for us, but as it turned out, we'd walked out through a different gate than the one they'd announced for our plane. My parents were at the other gate and we headed home.
And that was my holiday in Vienna. I have the feeling that we still missed lots, but that will be for another time.
XWA
This entry was crossposted from DreamWidth. The DreamWidth entry has
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