Vienna, at last

I keep putting off a post on our trip to Vienna. Part of that is because I've been sick, and part of it is because we had so much fun in Vienna, I wanted to take some time to blog it. I'm feeling better now, so I wanted to get some memories down before they all seep out of my head.

We were able to spend a full week in Vienna, and we timed our visit just right. We had beautiful brilliant early Spring sunny days. We snagged a nice Interhome appartment week long rental right in the heart of downtown.

Vienna was the eastern most outpost of western European civilization, and the ruling seat of the Hapsburg Dynasty for a loooong time. Every Hapsburg king and queen seems to have built their own palace in Vienna, so the city is filled with interesting architecture, and nice gardens. Since we had a week there, we spent plenty of time hanging out in the gardens. We also got in the habit of going to coffeehouses in the afternoon, which is a popular thing to do. Suzy got in the habit of having a slower pulse. :-)

We saw/visited/ate:

• Belvedere Palace and Klimt's glittery gold "The Embrace", and Schiele's depressing "The Family". I really enjoyed both of these artists


• Hapsburg royal jewels. It was interesting to see the Turkish influence in things.


• Natural History museum - Oddly thorough bird and mineral collections, spooky taxidermy collection. The bird collection went on for room after room after room.


• Standing room at Opera. For 2 euros, you don't expect to see much. Very entertaining guard trying to "run herd" on crowd.


• Schoss Schonbrunn. Interesting, but we've done a lot of palace/chateau tours, and this one was especially packed and especially expensive. We enjoyed hanging out in the gardens the most.


• Tofen strudel, Apple Strudel, Sacher torte. Yum.


• Numerous beers - Trumer Pils was my favorite


• Curry Bratwurst with spicy sweet mustard


• To counteract the Bratwurst, beer and desserts: Smoked tofu, fish in papier, Grilled goatcheese with Quinoa, Apple/Carrot/Ginger juice


• Best Falafel Sandwiches *ever*


• Best and most expensive California roll ever: cooked solid crab, avocat, masago, ginger, spicy mayo dressing, greens


• Lippizzaner stallion practise session. This rocked. 4 sessions of 6 horses each working on training and steps, with huge chandeliers overhead, and Strauss waltzes playing.


• Kunsthistoriches Art museum - beautiful museum (leftover palace) with nice compact collection. 3 Rembrandt self portraits were nice, numerous Reubens, and a nice Vermeer


• Exhibit of Ivory Carving from Hapsburg collection. I'm not a big ivory fan because of the poor elephant. But this exhibit was really amazing, they really can carve some wild things using ivory as the medium. Check out my pictures to see what I mean.


• Palace furniture museum. The Hapsburgs had so many palaces, and their furniture traveled with them when they moved palaces. So when the Hapsburg Dynasty fell over, they eventually made their furniture warehouse into a museum.

There are still plenty of things we didn't do, which of course means Vienna goes on our lengthy list of places we'd like to return to some day.

Pictures are at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Vienna

Bratislava

We just got back from a week in Vienna and a short nip over to Bratislava, Slovakia.

Bratislava is a really bizarre place. It's a broad mixture of many different things. Elegance from the 1800 Hapsburg dynasty royalty, cute domed church towers, funky crumbling Art Nouveau, 40 years of Soviet rule (including lots of blocky concrete), sad little public transportation trolleys, and a gussied up downtown pedestrian area where there are trendy bars and restaurants. Throw in a _completely_ unrecognizable language (hello, 10 cents will buy you a vowel), fantastic cheap beer, nice hiking close by, and that's Bratislava.

Of course, you are still wondering about the bizarre picture here. That was our hotel. I kid you not. We weren't to thrilled by it, it was run by supplement popping hippies pretending to be artists (mind the paint and brushes on the breakfast table). The inside of the room was..uhhh...somewhat lacking in cleanliness. We've stayed in plenty of dumps before, that can be part of the fun sometimes. But this one was a bit too creepy, and the breakfast bar was just icky.

Bratislava was interesting, watching the city shake off the effects of communism in downtown. But you also have a nice view of identical rows of huge monolithic apartment buildings out in the burbs built during communist rule. And we found ourselves a bit frustrated by the public transit, the machines selling tickets *only* took coins, but no one would give you change. We poked around the town the first day, and went hiking the second day.

Pics at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Bratislava