One of the potential issues that we hadn’t been aware of when booking the Hotel Savoy (Garni!!) online was that there was a major construction project underway directly across the street. And, needless to say, our room faced the street. We had heard another couple complaining to the front desk about the racket, but to our relief, the noise was not a bother at all.
We feasted on another wonderful buffet, booked tickets to the Thursday night performance of La Traviata at the VolksOper through the front desk, and headed off for some mega-sightseeing. We started off by checking out the recommended “shortcut” route to the nearby Neubauger U-bahn station (which involved cutting through the front of a neighboring hotel and the shopping arcade), then headed off on a walking tour of central Vienna.
Our path took us past the huge museums of Natural History
and Kunsthistorisches Museum to the Hofburg complex. Given our limited time in all the amazing cities we’re visiting (Munich, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Salzburg), we’ve resigned ourselves to seeing a slim selection of offerings from the rich offerings available. Since there is no way to see it all, we cherry-picked a few museums and sights upon which to focus. Our first selection was the fantastic collections of musical instruments and arms and armor housed in the Neue Burg building, which is part of the Hofburg array. This massive curved building was commissioned by the penultimate pre-WWI Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph when he might have been better focused on other things (crumbling Habsburg Empire, perhaps?). 
Although the Neue Burg was never completed to its original, enormous conception, the interior details (marbled halls and grand staircases, etc.) are certainly a worthy legacy of late imperial might and wealth, and the music and armor museums were fascinating.
We continued around the Hofburg Quarter, past the Albertina Museum (one of the great ones for which there’s not enough time to tour), and had lunch at the wonderful little Reinthaler Café on Gluckgasse 5. We’d found this place through the Eyewitness Travel book, which has been generally very good on its recommendations. Paul had Bauerngulash mit Knödel (goulash with bread dumpling) and Annette had “special of the day” potato dumplings with bacon and one stuffed with sausage. Yum.
For the afternoon, we continued our walking tour past the Opera House, through NaschMarkt (a little bit of the Middle East, right in the midst of Vienna!) and then caught the Ringstrasse tram, which circumnavigates central Vienna. We got off on the Schottenring section at Borsegasse, and walked around the Freyung square area. We had the requisite Jause (the 3d meal between lunch and dinner consisting of kaffee and cake) at what turned out to be the annex to the famed Café Central, rather than the original one we’d been aiming for (half a block away), but nonetheless enjoyed Sacher tort and triple chocolate cake with coffees in a lovely courtyard.
We continued walking through the VolksGarten, and saw Parliament and Neue Rathaus (neo-Gothic town hall). Since it was starting to rain, we opted for the subway back but managed to get out of the station at the wrong exit and found ourselves 6 blocks from the hotel instead of one little short-cut away.
At this point we needed a siesta (or whatever they call it in Vienna), but didn’t really nap – just a break for journaling and chilling out. With a freshening-up and a change of clothes, we headed out for dinner to The White Chimney Sweep (Zum Weissen Rauchfangkehrer), a restaurant recommended by Paul’s parent’s, Dick and Jo. What a treat! We had an expensive but absolutely fantastic dinner:
Wine - Olivin 2000 Winkler-Hermaden
For Paul:
Velvet soup of river crayfish with watercress and cauliflower terrine
Saddle and shoulder of lamb
Gratinated herb-semolina and shallots-olive ragout
For Annette:
Stuffed squash blossoms w/ braised artichokes
Saddle of venison with red wine cherries, blettes and potato-cream noodles
Dessert - Woodruff parfait with braised white peaches & almond blinis
…and the toasted pumpkin seeds and another desert “treat.”
After dinner we walked down Kärntner Strasse, a major pedestrian-only shopping street
running about 6 blocks from the Stepansplatz to the StaatsOper. We admired the exterior of the Stephansdom church, with its multi-colored, elaborately patterned shingle roof illuminated and bought a chocolate from a bride-to-be who was out with her girlfriends at what we were told was a traditional bachelorette ritual of selling chocolates and condoms to strangers on the street. Perhaps a recent tradition???
We feasted on another wonderful buffet, booked tickets to the Thursday night performance of La Traviata at the VolksOper through the front desk, and headed off for some mega-sightseeing. We started off by checking out the recommended “shortcut” route to the nearby Neubauger U-bahn station (which involved cutting through the front of a neighboring hotel and the shopping arcade), then headed off on a walking tour of central Vienna.
Our path took us past the huge museums of Natural History
and Kunsthistorisches Museum to the Hofburg complex. Given our limited time in all the amazing cities we’re visiting (Munich, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Salzburg), we’ve resigned ourselves to seeing a slim selection of offerings from the rich offerings available. Since there is no way to see it all, we cherry-picked a few museums and sights upon which to focus. Our first selection was the fantastic collections of musical instruments and arms and armor housed in the Neue Burg building, which is part of the Hofburg array. This massive curved building was commissioned by the penultimate pre-WWI Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph when he might have been better focused on other things (crumbling Habsburg Empire, perhaps?). 
Although the Neue Burg was never completed to its original, enormous conception, the interior details (marbled halls and grand staircases, etc.) are certainly a worthy legacy of late imperial might and wealth, and the music and armor museums were fascinating.We continued around the Hofburg Quarter, past the Albertina Museum (one of the great ones for which there’s not enough time to tour), and had lunch at the wonderful little Reinthaler Café on Gluckgasse 5. We’d found this place through the Eyewitness Travel book, which has been generally very good on its recommendations. Paul had Bauerngulash mit Knödel (goulash with bread dumpling) and Annette had “special of the day” potato dumplings with bacon and one stuffed with sausage. Yum.
For the afternoon, we continued our walking tour past the Opera House, through NaschMarkt (a little bit of the Middle East, right in the midst of Vienna!) and then caught the Ringstrasse tram, which circumnavigates central Vienna. We got off on the Schottenring section at Borsegasse, and walked around the Freyung square area. We had the requisite Jause (the 3d meal between lunch and dinner consisting of kaffee and cake) at what turned out to be the annex to the famed Café Central, rather than the original one we’d been aiming for (half a block away), but nonetheless enjoyed Sacher tort and triple chocolate cake with coffees in a lovely courtyard.
We continued walking through the VolksGarten, and saw Parliament and Neue Rathaus (neo-Gothic town hall). Since it was starting to rain, we opted for the subway back but managed to get out of the station at the wrong exit and found ourselves 6 blocks from the hotel instead of one little short-cut away.At this point we needed a siesta (or whatever they call it in Vienna), but didn’t really nap – just a break for journaling and chilling out. With a freshening-up and a change of clothes, we headed out for dinner to The White Chimney Sweep (Zum Weissen Rauchfangkehrer), a restaurant recommended by Paul’s parent’s, Dick and Jo. What a treat! We had an expensive but absolutely fantastic dinner:
Wine - Olivin 2000 Winkler-Hermaden
For Paul:
Velvet soup of river crayfish with watercress and cauliflower terrine
Saddle and shoulder of lamb
Gratinated herb-semolina and shallots-olive ragout
For Annette:
Stuffed squash blossoms w/ braised artichokes
Saddle of venison with red wine cherries, blettes and potato-cream noodles
Dessert - Woodruff parfait with braised white peaches & almond blinis
…and the toasted pumpkin seeds and another desert “treat.”
After dinner we walked down Kärntner Strasse, a major pedestrian-only shopping street
running about 6 blocks from the Stepansplatz to the StaatsOper. We admired the exterior of the Stephansdom church, with its multi-colored, elaborately patterned shingle roof illuminated and bought a chocolate from a bride-to-be who was out with her girlfriends at what we were told was a traditional bachelorette ritual of selling chocolates and condoms to strangers on the street. Perhaps a recent tradition???Now it was time to head home, so we caught the U-bahn, and bought a 24 hour ticket which would get us through the next day’s extensive travels. Annette’s quote of the day: “I LOVE Vienna!”
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