The first thing we did when we got dropped off just outside the Ringstrasse (inside the ring is the heart of Vienna) was go to the train transportation office (OBB). I wanted to get our train tickets for our travel to Mauthausen, Salzburg, and Budapest, but didn't want to bother with ticket machines or trying to decipher German online. It ended up to working out fantastically. We didn't have to worry about tickets for the rest of our trip and we knew exactly what trains we were supposed to be on and when.
After getting our train tickets, we got our 72-hour transportation passes and took the U3 subway to the Herrengasse stop to get to our hotel. We stayed at the Best Western Hotel Das Tigras, which Brian made fun of us for. "You're going to Austria and staying in a Best Western?" To be fair, this Best Western was completely different than the Best Westerns in the United States. It wasn't some stinky, old motel. It was modern and just right for us.
This is the hotel on the right, and the second picture is looking up the street from the hotel:
We were too early to check in, so we left our luggage at the hotel and set out for a walking tour around the Ring. This image was almost a daily scene: My mom, looking thoughtfully at dirndls for the granddaughters. Step away from the window, Mom! Those dirndls are $200 each!
For a minute, we thought this was St. Stephan's Cathedral. Oh, how turned around we were for just coming in on an all-night flight and landing in an unfamiliar city! This is the Votivkirche, completed in 1879. It was constructed as a votive offering for the saving of Emperor Franz Josef's life after he was stabbed in the neck by a Hungarian national. The church is built on the very spot where the emperor was stabbed.
We continued walking and came upon City Hall next. It's the building with the pointy spires.
These two buildings are almost identical. The first one is the Kunsthistoriches Museum, and the one directly across from it is the Natural History Museum. The statue of Empress Maria Theresa is in the large lawn in between the two buildings.
These next pictures are of the Hofburg palace complex. This first picture shows the Burgtor, the only surviving gate of the old town wall. The emperor was the only one who was allowed to use the center arch to enter and exit.
This part of the complex is named "New Palace". It was where the music museum, the Greek and Ephesus museum, and the armor museums are.
A statue in the palace gardens with the imperial apartments in the background:
This is where the treasury is:
The interior courtyard of the imperial apartments:
The outside of the palace:
This is Kohlmarkt, the luxury shopping street in Vienna. We passed by the Valentino store a couple of times and admired this classy navy blue dress, and my mom said she would buy it for me if it was a good price. We asked the stuffy saleslady the price, and it was 1200 Euro! Gah! No dress for me! (1200 Euro is about $1700.)
We got hungry so we stopped in a little pastry shop to eat. The shop had a great name: Der Mann. It also had the best apple strudel that we ate during our entire trip.
After eating, we went back to our hotel room to check in, take showers, and get ready for the shows we had booked for the evening. Here's our hotel room:
Our first show of the evening was the Vienna Boys Choir (they have the funniest name in German: "Wiener Sangerknaben") at the Musikverein. We took the U3 to the U1 and got off on Karlsplatz, and once again, turned the wrong direction coming out of the subway and had to ask for directions. We passed by the Karlskirche on the way there:
The performance was only an hour long, but it was so good. Those boys are so talented! You can tell by the height differences that some boys are new to the choir and some boys are nearing the end of the time in the choir.
After the choir performance was over, we had tickets to see the Lipizzaner stallions perform at the Spanish Riding School at the Hofburg. On the way there, we passed by the Opera:
This is the Albertina Museum:
The streets surrounding the Hofburg:
There was this cute little clock shop across from the Hofburg. I sent this picture to the kids, and they declared it "freaky".
This is outside the Spanish Riding School:
This is the performance arena. No pictures allowed during the actual performance.
I think the Spanish Riding School performance is one thing I wouldn't go to again and wouldn't recommend. For one, it's really expensive for an hour-long performance. It was also a very dry performance. The narrations were given in German and English, which was nice, but it was hard to understand the English because of the German accent and because the noise was bouncing off of the large arena. The horses kept doing the same things over and over, too. I mean, it was impressive how well they were trained with high-stepping, straight lines, and at one point they showed how their trainers train them by standing right by their rear-ends (scary, if you know what horses can do with their hind legs), but all in all, it was just a dry performance.
Then again, we could have been unimpressed because we were so tired. This was one of our biggest mistakes, booking two shows for the day we arrived on an overnight flight. My mom made it through less than half of the horse show before she wound up like this:
To make matters worse, she excused herself from the show because she just couldn't stay away, and then she fell down the spiral staircase on the way down. Ouch.
After the show was over was made our way back to the hotel and basically died. We fell asleep at 9 p.m. and didn't wake up until 12 hours later.
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