Sightseeing in Vienna

---

Today we headed into the town centre to have a look at the buildings around the town centre and to do some museums and other activities. First we headed over to the Spanish riding school to see what sort of tickets we could get, and scored ourselves some excellent ones. We then had another wander around the town centre, saw amazing building after amazing building, and found the main Christmas market outside the town hall. We had a quick look there, also discovering that inside the town hall they had an awesome setup for the kids - all sorts of stalls set up where they could make jewellery or paint pottery or bake shortbread etc.
We then headed back to the Spanish Riding School for our 11am performance. For anyone who knew me as a kid they would know that i was horsemad for a while, so this was the fulfillment of a longheld dream for me. And the performance was everything we expected, the Lippizanner stallions were superb, and the performance exceptional. Even Mum said it was just as good as 30 years ago. 😊
We then went across the road to the Imperial Apartments and Sisi Museum (about Empress Elisabeth, a bit of a mythical hero over here). These were impressive, and well presented. We then took in the Imperial Silver Collection, which is on display in the same place, and were a little overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, let alone the quality of some of the pieces.
Then back to the Christmas market to try to do it properly, however every man and his dog was there as well by this time, so we didnt end up staying for that long as the crowds were horrendous. Then another marathon walk back to the train station to book what were supposed to be tickets to Prague. Turns out to get from Prague to Strasbourg would be a full 12 hours travelling, and there is no guarantee that there is even a 1st class in the Czech republic trains, so that could potentially have been a severely uncomfortable 12 hours. We decided that this was just too much, and after much debate changed our train tickets so that we are now taking a sleeper to Zurich (which will be an adventure in itself) instead.

---