Friday, July 13, 2007--Vienna--Day 5

Just when we thought our day couldn’t get any fuller…..after an early morning breakfast, off we went to Schönbrunn Palace for a tour led by a local guide, Mariette. I remembered the palace, especially the gardens, from the 1971 trip. It’s an awesome experience to be in the same rooms as the royal family of Austria and to learn how they lived centuries before.

After the tour, our guide took us on a bus/walking tour of Vienna for another two hours. She left us at the center of the city to have lunch and explore on our own. We stopped for pizza, as the four of us were in desperate need of a break from sausage, schnitzel, potatoes, and bread. We did a little wandering and shopping before returning to the hotel around 3:30 for a rest before dinner. At 5:30 we were off to a traditional Viennese dinner at a lovely restaurant (yes, schnitzel again, but with other accompaniments).



After dinner, we attended a Mozart (or Beethoven, according to Tony) concert at one of Vienna’s fine concert halls. The orchestra performed in period costume, complete with powdered wigs, brocade coats, and velvet britches. The soprano and baritone soloists were very enjoyable, as was the featured solo clarinetist. What a nice way to end our stay in a very musical city. Tomorrow—St. Veit, Austria.




Note: The hotel we stayed at here was a charming, boutique-style place with a variety of room sizes and styles. When we checked in, we found that we had been placed in a smoking room, and the smoke was very discernible, so we asked to be moved. We were told there was only one other nonsmoking room available, and it was pretty much in a different solar system than those of the rest of our group. We had trouble finding it at first, as it was at the other end of the hotel on a floor we didn’t even know existed, reached only by a staircase tucked away where it nearly couldn’t be found. Once we reached our room, we discovered a very adorable, spacious, garret-type attic room. The only problem was that the ceilings were sharply sloped, such that we had to stay on one side of the room or else duck to avoid hitting our heads. Same with the bathroom – Tony especially had a little trouble in the shower, which apparently was designed for Lilliputians due to the sloped ceiling. But we managed, and this ended up being one of my favorite rooms of all.