I'm going to back pedal a bit and fill in the gaps of our arrival and first full day in Wien. After our epic train ride from Prague in which our noses were assaulted, we taxied over to the Hotel Am Konzerthaus where we were excited to find we'd been upgraded to a lovely suite. Heather was given a bar of French Soap (which seems kind of an oxymoron to me) but she was quite excited and assured me it is very expensive... probably because of it's rare nature! Ha, I kid! I'm still just a bit put off by the French after yesterday's "Nightmare at DeGaul".
Our good friend "Yelp" is now in Vienna, so we consulted the site and found an interesting place to eat called Inigo. It was about a 20 minute walk and the weather was great. We sat outside in a church square and had a very nice meal then wondered about and found what a stranger on the street told us was "the best ice cream in Vienna" and it was good.
Thursday was our first full day in Wien. You may recall my Plzen post from Prague, when I said we'd just finished our first full day and were very tired. Well, that was an understatement. On our first morning in Wien, we got up and walked through the St. Charles Church plaza to the Naschmarkt. This famous outdoor food market has two lanes that run the length of about 5 long city blocks and is populated by stall after stall of farmer's produce, deli counters, and cafes as well as mini street vendors selling schnitzel and kabobs and all sorts of exotic stuff. Heather and I have a thing for these really green olives and after passing about 30 olive vendors we stopped and asked the woman for a very small amount of these gems. While scooping them she gave us a free sample of falafel which was quite good. She filled a tiny container less than half way and then asked us for 8,90 euro! That's almost $14! We thought she had said .89 euro and there was an awkward moment where we all stood there looking at each other... well needless to say we weren't dropping $14 on 12 olives so we sent it back and then the other two ladies got involved all while the first lady made sure they knew we'd had free samples like that made a difference in our price!?! I explained we only wanted a tiny bit, two euro worth at most, and so the 3rd woman dumped our olives back and scooped out about 8 olives. At this point we should have just left but we took them and walked to the Karlsplatz park to eat them. Would you believe that only 3 of them were edible! What a racket, but we got the last laugh because the lady that felt it was important to note that we'd had free samples counted out the wrong change and gave us an extra euro by mistake... :)
After "lunch" we walked into St. Charles Church and were faced with the first of many scaffolds in Vienna. The prestigious art school there was midway through the beautiful ceiling mural's renovation and they had a massive step/elevator scaffold erected all the way to the tiny top of the steeple. The elevator took us most of the way up but we were then faced with what seemed to be more stairs then in Prague's mini Eiffel Tower, Petrin Hill. Of course it says, "no more than 10 people allowed up from that point", and there was no way of knowing just how many people were already up there! We took the gamble and luckily only two other people were at the top. Funny, you don't feel the motion in the scaffolding until you get to the top and as we stood there alone looking out at the Vienna skyline from the tip top of the steeple we felt as though we were at the end of a whip! That thing shook and I swear I heard a screw fall out and all I could think of is how about our luck being at the top of this church in an earthquake. Luckily that wasn't the case, but we both hightailed it right off that thing.
From there we were off to Belvedere Palace, the summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy. The palace consists of two Baroque style palaces, the upper and lower, separated by an immense garden that stretches at least a quarter mile. The upper houses the best of Vienna's most popular artwork including what is supposedly the world's largest collection of Gustav Klimt's works. The Kiss and a few other recognizable works were there, but I think the Schonbrunn had more. Anyway, our journey there took twice as long since we were in desperate need of some water and a snack (since all we'd had to this point were 3 edible olives) and to our surprise we couldn't find a minimart or anything for almost 2 miles smack in the middle of the city surrounded by apartment and office buildings. Where do these people get their snacks? Ha, speaking of snacks we found ourselves way past the Palace on a major artery looking for something when we came a cross a door with the word SNACKS written in green neon above the door. I opened it and started to walk in to a room with two gambling machines and a heavy black door that prohibited anyone 18 or younger from entering? I don't know what snacks means in Austrian, but it's not the same as our definition I assure you!
After returning to our hotel to freshen up, we were off to the Leopold Museum for what looked to be a promising photography exhibit. Looks were certainly deceiving as we both agreed there was next to nothing that warranted being on display in a prestigious museum and the works that were of high quality and engaging were reproductions of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams works... The walk was nice and we had stumbled on to one of Vienna's oldest and most celebrated cafes, Cafe Sperl. Unfortunately we arrived 10 minutes to closing (we'd be back) and instead ate at this "cafeteria" style Italian restaurant called Vapiano. Here one is issued a debit card that is placed over a machine when ordering from a chef or bartender. The machine records the purchase and tells the cashier what you've had at the end of the night. The food is all quality ingredients and there were 4 pasta stations, a pizza and antipasti station, a salad station, and a bar with a nice selection of wines. The food was good and all in all it was a fun experience. At this point we'd been up for over 12 hours walking all over the city and we walked back and into our room like zombies.
