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Breakfast at Roger-gasse
One of the best aspects of staying in an apartment in Vienna is that every morning we had a scrumptious breakfast spread of freshly baked breads, cheeses, salami, fruits and cereal. This wasn't provided by the apartment landlord but by Nila, Hsin Hsin and William. These guys did all the hard work every morning in buying the ingredients from the local shops and preparing them for the rest of the crew.
1. Nila and Hsin Hsin - chief architects of the Viennese breakfast spread.
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Schonbrunn Palace
Schonbrunn Palace, located just outside the city center, is one of the key attractions of Vienna and is easily accessible by subway. AND .. it was the site of another The Amazing Race 4 challenge. OK - I promise, no more references to TAR4 after this.
The weather was not co-operative today. There was quite a down pour when we arrived at the Palace.
1. Palace entrance. 2. The main staircase. 3. Here's lookin' at you. 4. Another fancy lamp post. We spent the first couple of hours touring the various apartments and state rooms inside the Palace. One interesting factoid that I picked up during this tour was that this isn't even a Palace for the Hapburgs (who ruled Austria), but merely a hunting lodge. I can imagine a bumper sticker on the Hapburgs' horse-drawn carriages reading "you should see my other palace".
After our tour of the state apartments, we took in a strudel demonstration to rest our legs and sample some free strudels.
5. This is what we call a rolling pin. 6. I honestly thought I was going to be able to make a strudel until she started twirling the pastry around ... 7. A dough figurine.
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The Gathering and Disappearing Storm
By the time we finished the strudel demonstration, the sky was looking ominously dark. This was quite disappointing as we still had the palace gardens to check out. We broke for lunch hoping that weather will clear up after lunch. An Hungarian Goulash later, you would not believe the clear blue cloudless sky that greeted us !
8. The perfect storm turns into .. 9. the perfect day an hour later !
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The Palace Gardens
If we thought the Palace entrance was impressive and the State Apartments inside, grand - they were nothing compared to what's behind the Palace. All self-respecting palaces around the world, whether east or west, need a decent garden. We're talking at least 50 hectares or so just to have street cred. And Schonbrunn did not disappoint.
For me, the gardens were the key attraction here. We started off in the Privy Garden which we thought was "the" garden until we looked at the map. The Privy Garden was only 5% of the entire garden ! We had to hustle through the Privy Garden in order to leave time to see the other parts of the garden.
10. Bird's-eye view of the Privy Garden. 11. A perfect place for a stroll. 12. If I build a home, I'm going to add one of these fancy ivy covered walkways as well ... From the Privy Garden, we walked for about a kilometer to the top of the hill overlooking the Gardens. The destination was the Gloriette Panorama Terrace which as the name suggests, offers a panoramic view of the entire Palace grounds and the surrouding area. It was quite a hike to get up to the top of the hill, but the views were definitely worth the trouble.
13. Panorama of Schonnbrunn Palace and the surrounding area from the Gloriette Panorama Terrace.
14. Enormous statues line both ends of the Gloriette Terrace. 15. The Gloriette Terrace as viewed from the Palace Gardens below. 16. People relaxing in the Gardens.
17. One of many statues in the garden with the Palm House in the background.
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Belvedere Palace
After Schonbrunn, we headed back into the city to visit the Belvedere Palace. This palace was the residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose equestrian statue we saw at Heldenplatz yesterday. The main intent of our visit to this palace was to see Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" which was on display in the Austrian Gallery at Belvedere.
I'm not a big art fan, so I opted to walk around the palace grounds to take some photos instead while the rest of the gang went to visit the exhibition. While Belvedere does not have the sheer scale of Schonbrunn, but architecturally, you would agree that Belvedere is lot more interesting than Schonbrunn.
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Some Random Photos
The rest of the late afternoon and early evening was spent around the Kohlmarkt area, including a short visit to St Stephen's cathedral. Here are some random photos I took during the day.
19. I mentioned previously that one of the aspects that I liked about Vienna was the novel blending of the new and the old in the city's developments. Here are two examples of modern and innovative extensions to older residences found in the city. 20. Some abstract shots I took of the prayer intention candles in St Stephen's catherdral.
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Wow, one-fifth of our trip is already over ! Tomorrow, we leave for Salzburg.