Anyway, Sia and I made it to Vienna and headed straight to the McDonalds near her flat. We just chilled out and watched tv, as we suddenly realised that Croatia had been quite stressful.
Wednesday was really relaxed. We stopped by the art school that Hitler was rejected from, twice. It was just so odd to stand there and think, wow, even mentalists like him had dreams once.
Then we went to the Haus der Musik, which was entertaining and interesting, albeit quite bizarre. We composed a song by throwing dice (for which I bought the certificate because it was a real achievement) and learnt some very interesting facts about Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (he lived in 68 flats in Vienna because he was an awful tenant and also wrote one of the most well-known love letters?) and Schubert (who died at 32 from typhus).
For lunch, we went to Naschmarkt which didn't feel like Vienna at all!
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| Look at the size of em! |
We had a Chinese there and then headed to the Hofburg Palace again to find the Papyrus Museum. We found it on our second attempt - we were actually in the right building the first time, we just didn't realise it was there... Anyway, that was really interesting and, as usual, I yabbered on about Ancient Egypt for about an hour. The ticket we bought was also for the Globe Museum and the Esperanto Museum... obviously we went. We have now got some very obscure facts under our belt for future quizzes. Do you know what graticules are? Do you know who the most prominent globe maker in the 16th century was? No? Should have gone to the globe museum.
Dinner was at Vapiano, followed by coffee and cake at Cafe Central. I've just realised I didn't eat a single Sachertorte this time!
Today, we headed straight to the Spanish Riding School where we had a ticket to watch the morning exercises. Those horses are beautiful, and we were lucky enough to see one horse do a 'levade', where the horse rests on just its hind legs for 5 seconds. It can only be seen with the Lippizaners in Vienna, and I saw it even though I didn't go to a performance! You can't take pictures of any of it when the horses are around, because obviously it upsets them. Sad, but I have some lovely postcards. We watched for a couple of hours, then headed to lunch at one of the most famous restaurants in Vienna. After that we paid a visit to the old library in the palace.
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| My camera really didn't do this place justice, as usual |
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| I want it! |
I spent most of it whining about how unfair it was that I didn't have one. It was unreal. Beauty, eat your heart out.
Then it was back to the Spanish Riding School for our guided tour. It was excellent, and we got to go in the stables, inches away from these incredible horses! A question for all the horse riders out there: Is wool usually used in the soil stuff in a training centre? A woman was surprised that there was none there?
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| The indoor riding area, with the royal box |
Our next stop was the Imperial Crypt, of course, where we saw the tombs of Franz Josef, Sisi and Rudolf. I may elaborate on this at some point but I'm tired and well aware that my Blackberry keyboard is horrendously loud so I need to end soon...
We had more coffee and cake at Demal, which is another famous cafe, stopped at Spar to buy Mozartkuegeln (amazing dark chocolate marzipan and pistachio balls) for my mum and then chilled at home until it was time to drop me off.
I'm glad I came back to Vienna again, and I reckon it's not the last time. As Billy Joel once said "Vienna waits for you."
See ya in Berlin
Xxx
