Friday, June 8, 2007

Day Eight – Thursday, June 07 – Vienna



Vienna, day two, was a continuation of our ambitious agenda. We enjoyed another morning breakfast buffet – but are now (finally) seriously starting to slow down on the overeating. Since the limited number of spaces that the hotel rented in the garage were all spoken for (as we had been forewarned when we checked in), we moved car to an outside parking spot in front of hotel, which was off the street under an overhang and seemed as safe as in the garage.

Thursday was Corpus Cristi day in Austria, a religious holiday that meant that most major stores were closed and traffic was light, but fortunately all the sights were open.
We took the U3 subway and #58 streetcar out to Schloss Schönbrun. The Schönbrun Palace was, like Versailles, a “summer home” which was largely build out during the long reign of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa.

We bought the “Classic Pass – Light” (love that name) which gave us an audio tour of the first floor rooms, the Privy Garden, shrub maze, and access to the Panoramic viewing area on the top of the Gloriette. The first floor tour shows both ceremonial and private rooms used by Franz Joseph who was born at Schönbrun and lived most of his live there as he ruled from 1848 through his death at the palace in 1916 and lived most of his life there. His wife Elizabeth (known as Sisi) seemed to have spent most of her time traveling around Europe being beautiful and avoiding the Viennese imperial life which she found stifling. There were also many rooms that had been decorated for the court of Maria Theresa who ruled from 1740 to 1780. MT and her husband had 16 children, including the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who had been married off to France’s King Louis XVI and lost her head in the French Revolution.

After soaking up centuries of Habsburg imperial history, we stopped for a quick Radler and rest in the garden outside the maze. We continued up to the Gloriette, which is a neo classical arcade on a hill in the garden -- large structure which looks like a triumphal arch (or series of arches) and is basically a huge gazebo, since it’s really part of the garden and doesn’t have much function other than as a “social spot” with an amazing view. It was built in 1775, and it helped us understand the relative context of the time to remember that the American colonies were on the verge of declaring their independence from England in the east, and in San Francisco, Mission Dolores and the Presidio were about to be established.

After admiring the view from the top of the Gloriette, we headed back the same way we came and had lunch near the Hofburg at the “little Hungarian restaurant”, Ilona Stüberl at Bräunerstrasse 2. This was another restaurant recommended in our Eyewitness Guide, and, in preparation for our trip to Hungary, Annette had paprika chicken and a Radler, her new favorite drink, and Paul had brossai – a spicy fried pork and potato dish and an Edelweiss Weißbier. For desert, we could resist sharing an Ilona Palatschinke: a crepe filled with apricot jam and cream cheese topped with chocolate syrup…another late and heavy lunch, as is becoming our custom.

By the time we got to lunch it was around 3pm and so all we had time for after lunch was the Schatzkammer (Imperial Treasury), the spectacular display of crown jewels and imperial vestments exhibited at the Hofburg.

We headed back to hotel for a quick change of clothes and took the U-bahn to the VolksOper (http://www.volksoper.at/) to see La Traviata. Neither of us are opera experts at all, but we’ve been to a few over the years, and we both thought this was a good performance. The leads, especially Melba Ramos as Violetta, were all strong, and the staging, costumes, choreography and choral numbers were all excellent. Since we had been at a bit of a loss with following the plot when we watched the marionette version of Don Giovanni, we had boned up on the internet by reading a couple of plot scenarios. This was helpful since the supertitles projected overhead translated the Italian libretto into German, of course.

The opera started at 7:00PM and was 2 and a half hours long, so we had time afterward to head back to our neighborhood for a bite to eat. We walked back to the Spittleberg pedestrian areas and shared a bit of soup and salad, wine & beer at the outdoor seating area of the Creperie-Brasserie Spittelberg on Spittelberggasse 12. They were closing down the outside area at 11PM, so we finished up and headed back to the Savoy.
Annette’s quote of the day: “I’m not ready to leave Vienna yet!”

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