Sisi Museum, Silver Collection, Imperial Apartments, Leopold

I mentally prepared myself for the day as I have a nasty habit of becoming instantly tired the second I step foot in a museum. It was a museum heavy day with the Sisi Museum, Silver Collection, Imperial Apartments, and the Leopold. Sisi a beloved, late, princess, who has had a myth created about her and her personality after her death, elevated to a near Dianna type status in the country. The Imperial Silver collection shows all the place settings, center pieces and cutlery of the HRE, which is pretty interesting, but was too crowed, and after a certain time becomes "plates, spoons, more plates, serving platter, knives, etc." The Imperial apartments were interesting as well, though similar to the Schonnebrun because they were decorated and inhabited by the same people.

After we headed to the Leopold Museum, which was far too large to me to appreciate. I was pretty museumed out at that point, so I took advantage of many of the chairs in the galleries. A remarkable place, but not my style of art, and not after other museums.

Schonnebrun and Carriage House

The wind whipped all feeling from our faces as we left the house. While it has mostly been cold while in Vienna, though a few days getting just above freezing, neither of us had encountered anything life that since leaving Kalamazoo. We went as quickly as possible to the castle. It was kind of a madhouse when we got inside. No place we've visited had really been that busy, except for the Schonnebrun. After getting out tickets, we picked up our audio guides and began the tour. The audio guide gives descriptions of the rooms as you pass through the palace, which really helps to bring the place to life, beyond just he beautiful furnishings.

Once finishing the tour, we picked up some food at the still-open Christmas market out in front. We were freezing down to our bones so we quickly made our way over to the carriage house. The carriage house contains some of the most ornate, and many of the surviving carriages from the imperial family. All of them looked like Disney's inspirations for princess movies. I can't imagine seeing one rolling through the streets of Vienna- how magnificent!

Our journey home was quick, as we were hoping to still have 10 fingers and 10 toes by getting home.

Christmas at St. Stephansdom

While we were free to do anything for Christmas, we decided that a little bit of tradition might be nice. Are Christmas morning we headed to St. Stephansdom, one of the most famous churches in Vienna for a morning service. Somehow I thought that a Catholic Mass in German would remind me of Christmas at home. Wrong. Basically I was kind of cold, confused and tired most of the time. I had no idea what was going on because it was a Catholic Mass and it seemed a little ridiculous that we had to stand up and the cardinal need to take on and off his hat every time he stood up or sat down. That being said, it was an amazing choir and orchestra accompanying the service who were fantastic to hear. after an hour and a half we called it quits and snuck out during communion, with a fair amount of others joining us. It the beginning when we sang "O, Come all ye faithful," it was interesting, but the number of familiar hymns after that sank down to zero, and my interest along with it.

We headed home with small snow flurries falling around us, opened presents, and cooked up a very (not) traditional meal of mashed potatoes, peas and fajitas for Christmas dinner. It was certainly different than other Christmases, but great none the less.

Spanische Hofreitschule- The Spanish Riding School and Nash Market

We finally started out our day earlier, getting out of the house before noon. Actually to get tickets we had to be at the ticket office when it opened- 9am. We were able to shake our butts out the door in time, actually arriving early and were the first in line. We bought our student tickets to the morning exercise then wandered around a bit before heading back in to get seats. While the morning practices are billed as "Morning Exercise with Music" implying a sort of dress rehearsal, it's closer to what the name actually says. We saw and enjoyed all the the special tricks of the famous Lipizzaner horses, though not as a true show. It was definitely worth the 6 euros each, rather than the 25 each we would have payed for a regular show. Unfortunately, not photos were allowed, so you'll have to google some photos of it.

On the way home we stopped at the Nash Market, which is a HUGE open stall market only one subway stop away from us. We picked up some hummus, pita and falafel along with a few other treats. Coutances has some shwarma places, but not much else by way of "ethnic" food, and there is little for purchase to bring home. It was all AMAZING and I absolutely adored it. For our Christmas Eve dinner we had chinese stir-fry which continued our international food selections for the two days. After that was relaxing Christmas movies at our apartment, with frequent "Can we open the presents yet!?!" from Anthony who is on the early open Christmas Eve tradition.

Naturhistorisches and Figlmüller

We started out like most days- a Christmas Market! Once getting some snacks and taking a look around we headed into the Museum of Natural History. While the exhibits in the museum are interesting, even more so than that was the beauty of the building. It was absolutely gorgeous and the regal architecture, like that of many places we've seen, brings the experience to a different level. There were huge geology and zoology exhibits. Another great attraction was the "Venus of Willendorf" which is a small plump fertility statue from about 25000 years ago. The second floor had many stuffed animals; polar bears, fish, gazelle, etc. However I got nervous as I saw whale bones framing an entry. Rather than Anthony continuing to scope out every room for me, I waited in the cafe area while he saw the last few exhibits. He reported afterward that there were more whale skeletons so it was best that I took an early departure.

The ceiling of the cafe area- beautiful!

The elephant statue that's in front of the museum and Anthony!

For lunch we went to Figlmüller which is listed in one of our guide books and has a reputation for great Weiner Schnitzel. The lunch was amazing and HUGE. We took home leftovers to have on salad later, though I could barely even eat dinner after that meal.

On the far side is the schnitzel and the closer one is pork medallions with green beans wrapped in bacon and noodles that I ordered! It was pretty much the most amazing meal ever.

Night comes around 4h30 so we try to start our days earlier and to bed earlier. This usually means Anthony sneaks in a nap, I get distracted on the internet and then I become super sleepy the second we step foot into a museum. I'm working on it though! Luckily since we have so many days here, we really get the opportunity to explore everything we want to see.

Stephansdom, the Karlskirch, and the Belvedere

We started the day off with a trip to the Lower Belvedere to finish what we had started the day before. The Lower Belvedere has more modern contemporary pieces, which I didn't really care for but Anthony enjoyed. Afterward we headed over the Stephansdom, the main church in the city whose spires towers over the city's landscape. We decided to head to the South Tower, the taller of the two towers for the apparently spectacular views. The South towers is taller but lacks something important- an elevator. The stairway was a small, spiraling and dark. It would have been quite claustrophobic in the summer with more visitors, but luckily we only had to pass people in the other direction 2 or 3 times. The views were fantastic but we were definitely panting after 350 steps. We felt like we were so high above the city, but looking at the picture of the church, we were only halfway up the tower! The rest of the way isn't accessible, but I think I would have been scared to go much further.

We weren't even all the way up to the stop-off in the tower when I took this photo. The tiled roof is one of the coolest parts of St. Stephansdom.

The view we worked so hard for

This is the tower that we went up into. We were probably about even with where the covering/work outside finishes

On the way home we went to Karlskirch with another Christmas in front. Karlskirch is absolutely beautiful with a soaring ceiling and amazing frescoes. They have an elevator set up in the middle that leads up to a platform which then allows you to climb scaffolding staircases up to the the very top of the church. This allows a panoramic view of the city, a close up of the wonderful artwork and a serious case of vertigo.

Looking down from the scaffolding into the church

Up close you could really appreciate the paintings even more

With tired legs, we headed home after, have seen enough dizzying heights and content to stay on the ground for a while.

First Real Day in Vienna and the Upper Belvedere

Monday night Anthony finally arrived after 2 and a half days in London. He was short two bags (one of which would arrive Thursday night, the other is still somewhere in the hands of British Airlines). It was such a relief to finally see him, not only because it had been 3 months, but because it seemed so uncertain if he would arrive at all. It took him a plane ticket to Brussels from London and he just barely got out on the last plane from Brussels to arrive. Four countries in 5 days!
Tuesday morning we headed out to see some Christmas Markets- the number of which is one of the reasons I wanted to come to Vienna. At our first one we (I) saw some items for sale that looked suspiciously like latkes- and so they were! Some latkes and glühwein certainly brought up our spirits.


Then we headed over to the Belvedere which had another Christmas market in front. After looking around that we headed into the museum. The Upper Belvedere has some older pieces, while the Lower Belvedere is contemporary and modern art. The Upper Belvedere has Klimt's "The Kiss" as well as some of his other pieces. There were also some Renoirs, Monet's, Manet's and some by Herbert Boeckel that I really liked. The gardens that surround it were not in their prime obviously given the season, but must be spectacular in summer.
We saved the Lower Belvedere for the next day, as we had been over ambitious with heading out so early in the morning. After picking up some groceries we headed home and made some dinner for a relaxing evening together.