Vienna, Austria - Thursday

We started our day with a leisurely breakfast at a nearby restaurant. Most restaurants here all have outdoor seating and offer blankets in the evening if it gets cold. From there we headed to the Imperial Treasury at the Hofburgs Palace. The Treasury holds many of the crowns, jewels, and suites of the emperors from the Hofburgs time of reign.

Next up was the Empress Sissi Museum and Hofburg Apartment Tour. Sissi was 15 years old when she was married to Emporer Franz Joseph I. Their mothers were sisters and planned a meeting of Franz and Sissi's older sister, but Franz fell in love with Sissi at first sight. And yes, they were cousins. Prearranged marriages were common in order to guarantee control of monarchies. Sissi was not interested in marriage but obliged. She did her wifely duty but stayed out of politics for the most part. She suffered from some depression as a result of her wishing for a freer life. By later in their marriage, the two of them spent very little time with each other as Sissi would travel whenever possible. She was assassinated on one such trip. The apartments were lavishly decorated and beautiful as expected.

In the distance we saw the city municipal building so we ventured that direction since we hadn't been there yet. It was hard to get a good view of the city building because there was a circus set up in front of it - a big to tent, smaller tents and lots of trailers. They will be here for a month.

We came to the Volkstheater Park, another pretty, green space in the city. We stopped at a cafe in the park for a light lunch. We noticed a grande looking building on the park and went to check it out. It was a one room contemporary art museum with revolving exhibits. The current exhibit , Kiteezi, was based on a city in Uganda where a landfill collapsed killing 24 people. The exhibit was completely made of recycled garbage and emphasized the need for less waste. The artist was Nabukenya Allen.

For dinner we decided on a small, local restaurant that focused on Viennese food. It was a small, family owned place where the person waiting on us spoke very little English. When we asked about dinner we were told that they only thing they had was goulash. Perfect. When it was served it was meat and broth only. We were used to goulash having potatoes or carrots or something else in it. The meat was delicious and extremely tender and it was served with bread.
Eileen's story: the meat was delicious but I am not a gravy person and I rarely sop up food with bread - it makes it soggy, yuck. While Jeff sopped up his broth, I left mine. In her limited English, the waitress (owner?) asked if it was okay and wanted to bring me different bread. She was truly appalled that I left the broth. I definitely disappointed her!

Our musical adventure tonight was to the opera. The Vienna Opera House is well known and sells out well in advance of the performance but they sell standing room only tickets at 10am each morning of a performance. The Vienna philharmonic plays for the opera, so going killed two birds with one stone, seeing the opera house and hearing the philharmonic. The show was The Marriage of Figaro, basically a romcom that lasts 3:45 hours with intermission. Our standing area had great views of the stage but we were packed in pretty tight. Each row had less than 2 feet of space between railings and tablets that translated into whatever language you wanted. Being packed in like that, it was pretty warm. We didn't expect to stay for the entire thing but wanted to experience it. We ended up liking the show and enough other people left at intermission that we had more space to move around a little so we decided to stay. And the Vienna Philharmonic was magnificent! Following the show we found a cafe and had a spritz and sacher-torte, a famous Viennese cake.Read more