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Published: July 21st 2012
Vienna Opera House
The building itself is worth the tour.Rain, rain go away!
We had another busy and interesting day. We decided to follow a Rick Steves recommended city tour. We had our book and audio tapes with us and found them valuable to see so much in so little time. It would be easy to spend a week here visiting the museums and historical sites, not to mention all of the dining venues.
The weather was overcast but not raining as we left the hotel.
We started our walking tour at the Vienna Opera house. It is famous due to the various notable opera and ballet performers that have entertained there. English tour was about to start at 10am so we purchased tickets and waited inside the lobby for it. We met there another America couple with their teenage son there. They were from San Diego and provided their son this trip as a graduation present. It was their idea to make photos with the hanging costumes. We enjoyed the tour even though I have never had much interest in opera or ballet. What was good was the information on the lifestyle there in Vienna.
After the tour we walked towards Saint Stephens Cathedral. Along
Vienna Opera House
Jackie will soon be an opera star with that outfit the way, we stopped at Reinthaler's Beisl for lunch. A beisl is a Viennese tavern which is a cross between an English pub and a French brasserie.
After lunch, we continued on the tour route to the catherdral. As I had downloaded a R. Steves walking tour of the catherdral, Jackie and I plugged in our earphones and listened as we proceeded around the impressive, historical church.
Next, we made our way to the Hofburg. This is a complex of palaces where the Habsburg emperors lived. They governed Austria for five or six centuries. We were impressed with the history although many of you know that I am not very impressed with the idea of royalty. Seeing how they lived did nothing to improve my opinion. One of the best parts of the tour was a large presentation on the wife of Emperor Franz Josef. Her name was Elizabeth, but was commonly called "Sisi." She is known today as similar to Princess Diana of England. They met when she was 15 and married at 16. She was not comfortable in the early days of royalty but later adjusted. But she had a bizarre side and was tragically assassinated
Vienna Opera House
I always said, if the dress fits, where it. I'll never make it in opera at an early age. There were too many stories to repeat. After this rather long tour, we headed back to the hotel for some rest.
After about an hour, Jackie jumped up from a short nap and said let's go to a heurigen. She explained that it was a were fun Viennese institution that we should experience. They are wine-garden restaurants that the government has allowed to sell locally grown wine tax free. Many are located north of the city in the Vienna Woods area. It sounded like a great idea to me and we set off to find one.
Jackie picked one in the Grinzing area. We took one tram near our hotel to another tram which that took us all the way to the Nussdorf stop. The only problem was we missed the Grinzing Street stop that we needed. Once we realized this we got off the tram, in the rain, and started searching for options. A friendly Viennese woman stepped us and asked if we needed help. First in German, then in broken English. We followed her to catch another tram returning south, when Jackie thanked her and complemented her on her English. That's when
Vienna Opera House
The balconies were impressive as with everything in the house. she blushed and said it wasn't as good as her Portuguese. That's when I responded in Portuguese. She was happy and so was I. We had been struggling for three days to understand anything and now we could talk. For the next ten minutes she told me her life story and I explained ours.
After that we caught the correct bus to our stop. The driver told us in good English that the alley across from our stop was where I was going. By now, it was raining hard. It was now dark. The "alley" was a six foot wide paved trail up at a 30 degree rise with poor lighting. No one else was anywhere to be seen. We had to stop every 100 yards to catch our breath. First I said we may have made a mistake, then Jackie would. But in the end, we arrived at 8:45pm to the restaurant. It had a fabulous view over the city. The restaurant name was Weingut am Reisenberg.
When we saw the waiter, he explained that the kitchen was closing at 9pm so we needed to order dinner by then. We had a great dinner and good wine.
After an hour or so, we walked back down, under our only umbrella, to the bus stop. We made it home before midnight. Needless to say, we had a ball and now find it hard to update our blog in a timely manner.
Stay tuned for more...
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