Good morning, Vienna

Shortly after breakfast we headed off, initially by bus, for an introduction to the city of Vienna. Our guide warned us that we'd be madly turning our heads left and right as though we were at a tennis match, and he was right. We took the ring road which basically circles the inner city and were quickly overwhelmed by the sight of the beautifully presented buildings, the statues, the gardens and all the other features that were continuously coming into view on both sides of us.
The bus then dropped us off near the Town Hall and our guide took us for a walking tour of an hour or so where he pointed out many of the key features of the inner city. It was quite overwhelming, being surrounded by so many beautiful things. Rather than take the tour bus back to the ship we decided to explore the inner city for ourselves then take the Metro back to base. We wandered around in a leisurely fashion taking it all in and getting plenty of photos.

Vienna is full of museums and galleries, so our greatest challenge came in deciding which one to visit. In the end we opted for the Albertina, and that was quite something. Much of their display area is given over to the works of Albrecht Dürer. There are something like 140 of his original paintings, sketches and engravings on display. But that's far from everything. Just about every well-known artist is represented there from Renoir to Manet to Klee to Picasso and many others. After a couple of hours at the gallery we were suffering from information overload so decided to head back to the ship.
As we'd been told, the subway was very easy to navigate and we then had an easy ten minute walk back to our ship.
Our first day in Vienna wasn't over yet. After a light dinner we hopped on the buses for what should have been a 20 minute trip to the Lichtenstein Palace for a Viennese concert. Things started badly with the trip taking twice as long as it should have. Evidently there was a street protest taking place and one of the major roads was closed. It was raining and this caused Brian to get into a row with an officious young lady from the Palace. We'd been invited to deposit our brollies in a receptacle just inside the front door, after which we walked up the 64 steps of the grand staircase to the room where they were serving drinks and the room where the concert was to be held. One of the attendants then told Brian that brollies, including our small folding one, weren't allowed and that he'd have to trek down the stairs to leave it at the entrance. A couple of others were caught out similarly. Honour was restored when our guide found us a secret hiding place on the 2nd floor.
What about the event and the venue? The Palace is in the rococo style which means that everything is over the top in terms of ceilings, murals, chandeliers and so on. It has been spectacularly well restored. The concert too was quite enjoyable, including pieces by Johann Strauss, Mozart and Lehar. It ran for about an hour and the orchestra was accompanied at various times by three boy sopranos, a tenor and a female soprano. Towards the end the room was starting to get uncomfortably hot so we were quite pleased that it finished when it did.Read more