Day 6, 2018: Is it global warming?

June 21, 2019

Vienna

The porter woke us up and served us breakfast as we approached Vienna this morning.  Our berthmate had gotten up a bit earlier and gone to his family's couchette.  I saw him standing in the hallway outside their couchette when I went to use the bathroom and asked if they were still sleeping.  He nodded and came back to ours a few minutes later and just laid in his berth.  It was a quieter and smoother train than the previous one, so we got some sleep, but still not a good night's sleep.

Our hotel was only a few blocks from the station, so we walked, checked in, and had to leave our bags because it was only 9:00.  We started toward the old town area.  Hot and humid again (*sigh*).  We walked by the Belvedere Palace but had been there before.  We took pictures, but decided not to go in.  We walked down a huge pedestrian mall.  People everywhere.  We looked for a shop selling smoothies or icy drinks, and finally found one.  There were several to choose from, containing mixtures of fruits and vegetables.  I chose Red Dessert, while Randy and Joshua chose an orange one. All of them tasted horrible!  I said that mine hurt my throat and Randy thought I was exaggerating.  He tried a sip and practically gagged--he said it was worse than the ones they had (which were awful too).  We threw what was left out.  The woman in the shop said that the heat was unusual, it was usually much cooler--just our luck, eh?

Gate at the Belvedere Palace

The front gardens at the Belvedere

statuary

Belvedere Palace

statuary

Belvedere Palace

Opera House

Interesting building-look at the painting on the walls!

A cathedral

Details

Inside the cathedral

spiral carved stone steps up to the pulpit

Joshua next to a model outside (the two people in front wouldn't move!)

We then went to the Hofburg Imperial Palace, the home of the Hapsburgs--especially Empress Elizabeth (Sisi).  The Palace includes a display of the Palace cookware, dishes, table centerpieces, and silver, as well as the Sisi Museum (which is all about Empress Elizabeth), and the Imperial Apartments.  After awhile, the dishes all begin to look the same, and who can use all of those forks??  Some of the table setups they showed had 5 eating utensils and 5 cups.  Guess they have more than lasagne and salad for dinner.  The Sisi Museum was interesting because she was engaged at age 14 (from a family of 7 children) and married a year later.  She was known as the "reluctant Empress."  At one point, she told her husband that she wanted complete control over how her children were brought up (they had three, one of whom died in childbirth) and where she traveled--sounds like my kind of woman.  She and her husband were evidently very devoted to each other which is nice (he was older than she was).  Her people seemed to love her.   The apartments were, of course, very grand and we could not take photographs of them.  They showed some of her gowns--wow!  They were beautiful and not at all suited to the heat and humidity.

The Hofburg Imperial Palace

The palace

Old Roman walls

The dome in the entrance to the palace

Some of the silver

A place setting!

The staircase

A chandelier

All three of us had been dragging and unenthusiastic the entire day, so around 12:00 we elected to see if our room was ready and walked several miles back.  Randy and Joshua wanted to stop at a McDonalds for lunch on the way.  When we arrived, it was ready, and we all showered and took a nap.  That helped somewhat and we prepared to go back out.  Joshua mentally needed some down time to himself, so he stayed back (to take advantage of the wifi) and Randy and I took a tram to the Weiner Rathaus (Vienna city hall).  The building is supposed to be a quite beautiful neo-Gothic building on the Rathausplatz (a city square), which usually has things going on.  Unfortunately, once we arrived, the entire building was covered in scaffolding and the Platz was fenced off for the construction.  So, we walked around and tried to find something still open.  All museums, etc. were closed, so we just walked around a bit and found a cafe for dinner.  We took another tram back to our hotel, picking up a sandwich for Joshua at a nearby cafe.

The University of Vienna

Another cathedral

The pedestrian mall

Finally, benches!

Stairs outside an art exhibit

an interesting building

Why the bunny?

Another interesting building

We all spent some quiet time on our individual pursuits (mine was writing this), and went to bed.  Thank goodness our hotel room has air conditioning.