Vienna - Friday

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So you can keep your Rome's, your Florence's and your Venice's. The most beautiful city in Europe is Vienna. My senses have been in overdrive today, We started with the grand tour as we usually do, this morning both by bus and foot. The beautiful Baroque architecture which I love. The grand duke in the 1850's decided to pull down the old city wall to extend the city and replace it with a ring road. So now there is a beautiful avenue flanked with the most beautiful buildings built in the old style. Except for the museums of which there seems to be a museum for just about everything, these buildings were often the palatial homes of the rich. Now they are hotels or apartments etc. Vienna is a very green city with some 800 parks. There are fountains and monuments with of course the famous sons (Mozart,Strauss and Beethoven).

If some cities are famous for a movie then Vienna's movie is "The Third man" and featured in it is a antique ferris wheel from the 1800's that is still in operation. We also visited the Hundertwasser House. This is the third most visited building in Vienna .He was a famous in Austria for designing very alternative buildings but heres the thing, he lived most of his life in NZ and you will know him for the Whangerei public toilets. He's a famous son here. He died on the QEII in 2000 coming back to NZ and is buried in NZ naked wrapped in a canvas under a cherry tree on his own property. (Don't know where).

In the afternoon we went to the Schonbrunn Palace. After finishing the walking tour past allthe beautiful shops and the catherdral and the winter place and the Spanish Riding School Grant and I decided jump in a cab and go to the Schonbrunn Palace. (The summer palace of the Hapsburgs). We found some others of our group there and did the tour together. My vague memory was right and it was worth the visit. About 40 rooms are furnished as it was in the very opulent manner and the tour gives you lots of history of the family. The gardens are spectacular and you would need a day to see all of them. We got the taxi back to town and on the way was held up as the lights were stopped for Angela Merkel who went flying past us in her limo.

In the evening we were taken to the Lichestein Palace for a cocktail and small concert of Struass pieces with a 10 piece orchestra, a very good looking tenor, soprano and two ballet dancers. They were all very good and it was very lovely.

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