Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Auf Wiedersehen Wien, Ahoj Praha

Today we tried out a different cafe for breakfast. I had a roll with ham and some sencha tea. It's so different building time into my day to eat a leisurely breakfast in a cafe: on workdays at home I eat at my desk, and on weekends I often eat breakfast on the run.


On the way up to the Hofburg, we stopped to take some photos:
Augustinerkirche spire

Josefplatz
 

Our first excursion today was to the morning exercises at the Spanish Riding School. On the way there we passed the stables (you can see a couple of Lipizzan heads if you zoom in):


This is the arena where the morning exercises take place:
This isn't the big fancy show that happens on weekends, but rather the actual morning exercise for some of the horses. The online reviews are bimodal: horse lovers think it's great, and non-horse lovers dragged there by their partners think it's the most boring thing ever. Susan and I both like horses, so we enjoyed our hour there. If you're not a horse lover, you might want to skip the following wall of text 🤣

Photography is forbidden after the horses enter the arena, so I'm going to try to describe what we saw.

Each 30-minute session had five horses with riders, one of which was a trainee. The full-fledged riders wear double-breasted brown tailcoats, cream breeches, black riding boots, and traditional (but goofy looking!) bicorn hats. The apprentices wear gray jackets with ties, and standard-looking riding helmets.

The horses start with a warmup, going from a walk to a trot to a canter. Later on they work on some of their fancy gaits, including a trot with a pause (I think that's "passage"?), and another one that has the horse moving diagonally while facing forward (their hind legs look like they're crossing).

The performing horses are white, of course, but one of the trainees had a horse that was still dark gray, so obviously a young horse. Their manes were all different lengths, but they were all combed to the left side of the horses' necks.

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After the morning exercises, I walked around a bit while Susan went to the auction house.
Stairs at the Albertina Museum

Hot dog stand by the opera house


Sadly, the opera house was closed to tours both yesterday and today, so I had to content myself with a million photos of the outside, and a couple inside the ticket-office entrance.
Arcade

Fountain

Lobby, viewed from ticket-office entrance

Staircase

Exit from the ticket office
 

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After packing my bags, I walked down to the Naschmarkt, and eventually met up with Susan there. The market has souvenir shops, restaurants, and all kinds of food (both ingredients and ready to eat). I bought a reusable shopping bag, and some falafel to eat later. 
And with that, it was time to say goodbye to Vienna. I stopped at the bakery near our pension and picked up a strawberry-vanilla pastry, then grabbed my luggage and took the U-bahn to the train station.

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The trip to Prague was uneventful, although a little delayed. The countryside is so lush and green, but I'll spare you the random photos taken from the train window. Instead, here's the pastry I bought in Vienna:

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This is the first time I've traveled by myself to a country where I not only don't speak the language, but can't even figure out what most of the signs were saying. Google Translate is extremely helpful when trying to decipher signs in stores (what kind of sandwich am i buying?). The train station is a bit puzzling to navigate: the directions for Uber pickup said something like "upper parking near 1b." It took me several tries to find that there was an escalator around a corner from platform 1b; the only sign I saw there said something about a historical building, and no big "P" anywhere. This must have been the historical part of the building:

  


I'm staying at Residence Thunovska, up near Prague Castle. The Uber driver had a hard time finding #19 (it is *not* across the street from #18 as one would expect), but eventually I made it here and am now settled in my 3rd-floor (American 4th-floor) room. My stair-climbing muscles have been getting a workout this trip, between the Roman arena in Verona and all the bridges in Venice, so it wasn't too painful to drag my backpack all the way up. (I think, though, that I will try to minimize the number of trips up and down I make each day!) 


Monday, May 27, 2024

The Best of Vienna

First stop today was a cafe, where we enjoyed our breakfast ouside. After that, we headed over to the Hofburg.
 
 
We started by touring the Sisi Museum and Imperial Apartments.
Sisi's bedroom

Sisi's exercise room — I don't think I've ever seen one in any other palace

Dining room

Place setting
 
 
Next stop was the Imperial Treasury. It's funny, real gold is so shiny and untarnished that it looks fake! There was room after room of scepters and capes and crowns and all kinds of other regalia. Here are some crowns:

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The weather was sunny and warm today, with only a brief sprinkle of rain (despite not bringing the raincoat), so for lunch we opted to sit in a cafe and enjoy some Eiskaffee (coffee with ice cream):

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Next we went to St. Stephen's Cathedral. We toured the main nave and catacombs (no photos allowed in the catacombs), but ran out of steam for the towers. Here are way too many photos:
Pulpit outside the north tower

Roof detail

Nave

Altar

Limestone pulpit

Pulpit detail

Pulpit detail

Nave looking toward organ

Organ

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For dinner, we decided to fully embrace being tourists and ordered wienerschnitzel.

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After dinner we sat in a park and enjoyed the lovely weather.
Brahms statue

Karlskirche

Karlskirche detail
Co-inventor of the sewing machine

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Last, but certainly not least, we went to a Vienna Philharmonic concert. On the program was Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, conducted by Adam Fischer, with the Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien choir. Despite the many different choirs both Susan and I have sung in, somehow neither of us has every sung this piece. Fantastic concert, amazing venue!
The concert hall (Musikverein Wien)

The performers

The organ (not used for this concert)

Happy tourists


Sunday, May 26, 2024

From Venice to Vienna

Today we got up early, had our last breakfast at Pensione Guerrero, and took a vaporetto to the train station for the almost eight-hour ride to Vienna.
In lieu of afternoon gelato, since we were on the train, we had the sfogliotini that we picked up yesterday:

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Once we arrived in Vienna, we opted to take an Uber to Pension Suzanne, rather than schlepping our luggage on the U-bahn.

Vienna is beautiful, in a very different way than Venice. We are staying in the middlle of the city, just around the corner from the world-famous opera house. After we dropped off our luggage, we decided to take a walk and look around. 

We stopped at St. Michael's Church to see the plaque honoring the premiere of Mozart's (unfinished) Requiem:

The inside of St. Michael's:
While we were there, we were treated to some organ music on that beautiful organ:

 


We ended our day with goulash at Zum Schwarzen Kameel, then strolled back to our hotel.